Introducing CoreBFRB

Introducing CoreBFRB

HabitAware is excited to share CoreBFRB, our new pre-trained gesture recognition model for Keen2 and KeenLite. CoreBFRB is designed to help people living with body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs) like hair pulling, skin picking, and nail biting by making detection faster to set up and more accurate from the start.

Interested in the technical details? Head over to our ✨NEW✨ research blog!

Why we built CoreBFRB

Since 2016, Keen has asked users to train the bracelet by performing their behavior once while the device learned from that motion. For many, this worked well, but if training wasn’t done precisely, it could lead to too many false alerts (vibrations). That could be frustrating and discourage use.

CoreBFRB changes that. Instead of relying only on one-time training, it uses research-informed presets based on thousands of real-world training sessions. These presets capture the most common motion patterns for BFRBs, so setup is faster and detection is more reliable right out of the box. Users can still fine-tune sensitivity and orientation, or create a custom model if needed.

What this means for you

  • Simpler setup – choose from illustrated presets instead of recording your own motion.
  • Fewer false positives – reduced unwanted vibrations from everyday movements.
  • Flexibility preserved – you can still adjust motion/orientation settings or custom-train if desired.

Built on real user data

By studying thousands of sessions, we learned: - Most users (68%) focus on hair pulling, followed by skin picking (22%) and nail biting/other (10%). - The majority of behaviors are head-related (81%). - Many people keep default sensitivity settings, but about a third lower them to cut false alerts.

These insights shaped CoreBFRB’s default settings, making it easier for most people to start successfully.

Looking ahead

CoreBFRB was developed with support from the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Mental Health. Beyond Keen2 and KeenLite, we’re building on this platform to explore new ways of detecting subtle behaviors and supporting mental health needs.

Try it today!

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