Generative Wardrobe by designer Alex Dodge is a concept study that explores various wearable technologies to form a complete system from head to the toes.

Starting with a highly futuristic head cap called ‘Sleep Talker‘ envisioned to allow the broadcasting of one’s unconscious experience = dreams on social networks. Facebook with a dream status update – how does this sound?

Haptic-Synth is an undergarment type of thin shirt embedded with with an array of Haptic-Synth ‘cells’. Each cell contains a compression touch sensor coupled with a miniature haptic feedback actuator. The Haptic-Synth shirt acts as gesture based input and feedback device for the complete wearable technology system.

A light, cross-seasonal jacket called Wearable Interface explores the possibilities of embedding mobile technologies in a ardent serving as CPU for future wearable technology systems.

The jacket’s on-board processor with connections to USB ports, GPS, accelerometers, microphones, temperature or photo sensors, can be trained and programmed to interact with a range of other devices.

Last but not least interesting is the Powerstep, a pair of nicely design shoes converting mechanical energy via piezoelectric ceramic components inside the sole into electric current with each step.

[TomsGuide via GizmoWatch]

We have seen our share on interactive gloves ranging from ‘just’ lighting up’ to the control of the virtual world on the computer. Gloves seems to be a prime target when it comes to electrify our wardrobe.

The Drum Glove System designed by Arnoud den Besten, Kristo de Pooter, Sam Vesters and Thomas Letermea, a group of students at the Artesis University College in Antwerp, setting the functionality level very high in the musical glove design concept category.

Drumming with your finger tips on the table is getting a complete different meaning and acoustic when you wear a pair for these Drum Gloves.

The Drum Glove system is a design concept study which envisions to have a full drum kit at your finger tips, controlled by the electronic in the backpack which also contains speakers and audio processing.

The team also imagines to enable multiple users to combine their (finger tip) drumming creating an out of this world drummer experience.

To demonstrate the how the Drum gloves could/will work the team made a video hammering away with their finger tips on a table top – impressive.

Sadly most of these cool design concepts never make it to the stores so if you really like that you might need to walk down the DIY lane.

[via: Designboom]

How technology can enhance fashion design has been nicely demonstrated by Tine Beez, a graduate of Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design with her ‘Fashion meets Technology‘ active wear collection unveiled last May.

The inspiration of her collection is drawn by the mountaineering legend George Mallory, using natural fiber combined with cutting edge wearable technologies to create  functional and visually appealing outdoor fashion for very chilly days.

While designing the ‘Fashion meets Technology’ Tine studied carefully the needs of mountaineers while in extreme cold environments which require thick layers of clothing but at the same time being able to move and act unobstructed.

Natural healing fibers such as Milk- Pearl and Aloe Vera help moisturize the skin and stimulate blood circulation in the outfit’s inner layers while Nano-technology is used to enhance wind protection and waterproofing in the outer layers without changing the fabric’s natural properties.

To protect against hitting rocks or other obstacles while in the rough outdoors, shock absorbent pads from d3o have been integrated into the garments to assist in safety and accident prevention.

Besides the comfortably considerations in the clothing design Tine did not forget to comfort the should of the wearer by adding the ConnectedWear system from Fibretronic to the outfit.

ConnectedWear is adding iPod control into clothing allowing to maneuver through the music collection while the iPod itself stays safe and warm deep inside the mountaineering clothing, away from the harsh environment of Mt. Everest.

[via: Dexigner]

Designer, artist Lauren McCarthy, currently an MFA student in the UCLA Design / Media Arts program developed ‘Tools for Improved Social Interacting‘, a series of wearable devices that use sensors to condition the behavior of the wearer to better adapt to expected social behaviors.

An interesting design concept that uses technology enhanced clothing to assist, train and support the wearer to ‘behave’ according to social expectations in a given life situation.

At first you might think: ‘for what on earth do I need social interaction aid in my clothing!’. Does our increasing dependance on computer aided socializing via Facebook or Twitter make us unable to interact with real persons?

This might become a problem in future but Lauren’s ‘Tools for Improved Social Interacting’ could proof to provide an interesting design for persons who need to (re)learn social interaction due to physical or physiological problems.

‘Tools for Improved Social Interacting’ include the Happiness Hat that trains the wearer to smile more. The smile size is detected via an enclosed bend sensor attached to the cheek. If the wearer stops smiling a servo motor moves a metal spike into the head proportional to the degree of smile.

The Body Contact Training Suit requires the wearer to maintain frequent body contact with another person. If the wearer stops touching someone for too long, static noise begins to play through headphones sewn into hood. A capacitance sensing circuit measures skin to skin body contact via a metal bracelet sewn into the sleeve.

The Anti-Daydreaming Scarf contains a proximity sensor detects if the wearer is engaged in conversation with another person. While he/she is, the scarf vibrates periodically to remind the wearer to pay attention and stop daydreaming.

Three interesting concepts which use our second skin, our clothing as medium to assist and to influence our social interaction – inspirational and expandable.

Lauren McCarthy’s ‘Tools for Improved Social Interacting’ can be found at SIGGRAPH 2010 from Sunday, 25 July through Thursday, 29 July 2010 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

According to an article from SiliconIndia, students at Nirma University designed a helmet that doubles as electricity generator. How? Firstly there are solar panels covering the helmet converting solar energy into electrical energy.

As backup power generator for rainy days or after sunset the students Pragnesh Dudhaiya and Aalok Bhatt envision the use of wind turbines integrated into the helmet. Smart idea but I am not so sure if we can call this also practical as a wind turbine has some ‘moving parts’ that most likely will make some noise on/in your head when the turbines work full speed.

Personally I like very much the – I guess – flexible solar panel cover for biker helmets. Most of the time biking is done by reasonable good and sunny weather where solar energy is plentiful. Maybe this concept is not necessarily something city or short distance commuters will find useful but I have some friends who spend many hours and days on bike trips, preferable when the weather is fine, and complain about batteries running out in their GPS devices which they find essential on those extended trips.

Think about – in most countries helmets for bikers are mandatory so why not using that area on the helmets to something useful, giving an occasional charge to devices while far away from any power grid.

If you are interested into how wind turbine in a helmet could work, check out this design concept by Malaysian designer Wai Hoong Leng, the Wind-Helmet.

[via: Gizmowatch]

The month of May is often associated with Love like ‘love is in the air’ when nature awakes finally from the winter hyper-nation and starts it’s new love-life cycle.

What better time could there be to introduce another project from the AiQ Smart Clothing Design Contest in Taiwan, the Silver Wing Award winning Love Shirt designed by students at the National Taiwan University (NTU).

The Love Shirt which comes in a pair to show off it’s capability is designed to express the love of the wearer to another person at two levels: a visual and a tactile communication between the garments to express the affection between to love birds T-Shirts.

The visual indication is realized via an heart shape on the T-Shirt, each shirt has one half of the heart. When the two love birds come close the heart half’s on the shirts start to illuminate, increasing the intensity as the distance becomes shorter.

With the press on a button inside the Love Shirt, a tactile signal can be send to the other shirt, creating a sensual tickle via an integrated vibration module. The communication between the two shirts is done wireless.

Under the supervision of Assistant Professor Shu-Yi Hong the students Jerry Chen, YS Chang, Wen Hsiao, Willie Ding and art designer CY Yu (invited from  YunLin S&T University) design the Love Shirt concept as interaction clothing, clothing not only to react on the surrounding environment like temperature, light or sound but to interact with each other, clothing that communicates, shares information about the wearer.

No need to be concerned over privacy issues, the team envisions some provisions like unique ID to prevent our future T-Shirts to disclose our intimate secrets, it will only share information the wearer has specifically given permission.

Students and artists have the privilege to truly think out of the box, to push the technological boundaries far into the future. Whatever is thinkable will be translated into objects that stimulate, challenge and inspire the rest of the world to achieve their visions one day.

talk2myShirt works hard to find these visionaries in the field of wearable technologies, technologies that add functions to clothing we often desire but hardly can imagine to find in our wardrobe one day.

One of the most amazing I have come across although reaching far into future of technology enhanced garments is the creation of a team of students at the Shih-Chien University in Taiwan, Yu S Pai, Dudley and Hsu.

The style of the dress is made along the lines of robotic design lines with illumination elements. The real creative gem stone is in the material of the dress, made of a fully textile based dispaly. On the back of this futuristic dress is a camera integrated.

When activating the camera the fabric of the dress will display what is going on behind the wearer. Somebody standing in front of the wearer will be able to see-trough that person, making her invisible, or almost invisible.

Unfortunately this advanced textile display technology is not yet available but as we have reported earlier, high profile projects are looking into the feasibility of it. If these projects can deliver on their ambitious plan these students might very well see the invisibility dress become reality.

I have seen various research projects looking into technologies for the invisibility cloak, most of them work on reflection or light absorbing materials or coatings. The invisible dress design from these students takes a complete different approach, an approach which might allow us to create clothing to see through, to make the wearer invisible with the push of a button.

This fabulous creative design won the Gold Thread Award in the first AiQ Smart Clothing Design Contest which has attracted more than 30 teams. Some of these projects will be on stage here on talk2myShirt over the coming days.

Hilary Hayes, industrial design student at the Ontario College of Art&Design (OCAD) in Toronto created a scarf which features dynamic light pattern depending on your breathing.

She got the inspiration for this design from two areas, one being the fact that during winter time when the temperature reaches the freezing point we see our breath and that of others in form of water vapor clouds hanging in front of our faces.

Her second inspirational area comes from the fact that people effected by asthma have to be more ware of their breathing pattern.

Hilary took her breathing observations and beautified them by merging some eTextile magic with a clothing accessory like a scarf.

A LilyPad temperature sensor, the LilyPad Arduino and power supply modules are integrated into the scarf. The temperature sensor near the mouth picks up the temperature variations which is translated via the LilyPad to points instead of degrees making this design concept independent of winter time only use.

The LEDs in the scarf fade in and out in sync with the breathing, creating a subtile, dynamic light pattern on the scarf. A lovely style concept which could be transfered to a ‘hard wired’ eTextile chip to be used by fashion designers as an option to create more interactivity into future fashion.

[via: Electricfoxy]

The Bio Circuit vest is a interesting concept design created by two students at the Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Dana Ramler and Holly Schmidt. Bio Circuit provides a sound (e)scape in sync with the biological state of the wearer.

As parameter of the biological state serves the heart rate which is slower and even when relaxed and calm and goes up with the stress feeling, excitement and anxiety.

These different emotional cycles we pass through every day can be enhanced or influenced by sound, be it music of different types or sounds from our environment like birds, the flow of water which is associated with calm or the city sound scape of traffic, people walking and talking.

Depending on ones stimulus preferences these emotional playlists will be automatically selected according the heart rate from an MP3 player and reproduced via a speaker integrated into the collar of the Bio Circuit vest.

The collar design ensures a certain degree of privacy, shielding part of the surroundings but does not block out the space around.

Blending technology with clothing generate amazing innovative ideas like the one I am going to introduce today: the Subtle Subtitles Scarf designed by Calum Pringle, Interactive Media Design student at Dundee University.

Calum’s motivation for the Subtitles Scarf which is currently in the ‘experience prototype’ phase is to provide the occasional subtitle, in real time, for people are effected by Dysarthria, a motor speech disorder resulting from neurological injury and is characterized by poor articulation.

This explains the Subtitles part of the scarf. People who have difficulties to speak clearly enough for others to understand each word could wear this scarf which supports the communication by adding ‘Subtle’ subtitles.

How does this work? In the current prototype a microphone inside the scarf is connected to a laptop which sends the voice input goes to a website.

Actually the microphone is constantly monitored via this website. Javascripts written by Claum filters the dialogue and strips out words that he has learned do not need to be subtitled in a conversation (”the” “a” “he” “she” “this” “that” “these” “those” etc, and he keeps adding to the list).

The iPod Touch/iPhone application connects to another website where the filtered dialogue is sent and styled and then displayed on the iPod Touch/iPhone screen as real life subtitle.

This subtitle supports the common sense we employ when speaking to one another and allows the individual to continue using their own voice instead of relying on a machine that takes text and provides a synthesized voice.

Using subtitles in the scarf does not mean every word is subtitled, you only ever glance at the scarf – for the most part you maintain eye contact with the wearer and therefore keep the conversation personal – an aspect that is often lost when using other communication aids.

Blending devices like the iPod or iPhone into clothing accessories like the scarf, technically and visually via the wallpaper screen, offers a more, subtle, fashionable and attractive form to wear this communication aid compared to hanging the same devices via a lanyard around the neck.

Wearable technology with an interesting twist.