Smart-phones added a new dimension to our lifestyle by offering an App = solution for almost everything imaginable and if there is no App yet – it will be made soon.

Increasingly, these smart pocket devices connect to all kind of peripherals like sensors, extending our sensibility towards the environment and even our body beyond our natural sensory capabilities.

Integrating some of these sensors into our wardrobe is one of the ‘natural’ things that will happen sooner than later. It is not always practical and convenient to attach sensors to clothing or stuff them into a pocket at the start of the day.

Jennifer Darmour at Electricfoxy in cooperation with Artefact developed a complete Wellness and Fitness recording system based on ‘moodwells‘, modules that plug into sensing garments like the body positioning garment in the photo, recording the wearers activities all day long.

The collected data are send to the modwells cloud where it can be accessed and analyzed by authorized persons like the wearer, medical assistants or family.

Keeping an eye on ones personal well-being becomes increasingly important with the decline of our environments well-being on one side, creating the needed to watch out for pollutants but also to monitor the personal lifestyle and listen to the well-being of our body before it is too late.

The modwells Wellness and Fitness system is a interesting concept, weaving literally wearable technology into our daily life.

Semi professional and professional athletes need to collect their bio and other workout related data during their training to optimize their program to successfully comped for the precious metal at sporting events.

Most of the recording is still done by hand with data coming from multiple sensor devices attached to the athletes body. It’s working but cumbersome to set up the sensor devices each time before starting the training.

In our digital age where everything can be easily recorded and beamed to the ‘cloud’ for number crunching and presentation anytime and anywhere, smart workout apparel like the e-Shirt developed by Emxys at ESA’s Business Incubation Centre Noordwijk in the Netherlands, is pointing into the future of smart workout apparel for athletes.

TrainGrid consists of an e-Shirt with integrated sensors to determine in real time the athlete’s electrocardiogram, heart rate, skin temperature, body position and location via GPS. All the data are transmitted via Bluetooth to a mobile phone or computer to share with a coach, doctor, friends or on a social network.

A developer Kit is available for € 1000.- (around $ 1300.-) a steep price tag but the kit is not intended to be a commercial product but for developers to start making apps for iPhone, Facebook, Android – you name it.

Maybe smart workout clothing can motivate many to go out and move around a bit and share training routes and schedule, compare performance and the fitness status instead of sitting on the couch and share what movie you watch right now. Yeah I know, I am an optimist …

Doing even simplest forms of exercise like walking is already an effort people in so called highly developed countries have to be motivated to do.

Many spend time in offices and in front of TV or computer in the evenings, make hardly a mile a day.

Stefan Zwegers has a innovative, motivational proposal in from of his wearable electronic concept which is currently exhibited at the Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.

His project called ‘Walk!‘ consists of two concepts which he did for the Adidas Innovation Team and some coaching by his professors Stephan Wensveen and Michel Peeters from the Department of Industrial Design at the Eindhoven University of Technology.

Walk! is a shirt developed for women who want an active lifestyle. In the morning a pedometer module is attached to the shirt, which registers the amount of steps that are taken during the day.

The interesting twist: the shirt has circles printed with thermochromic ink which  changes color in sync with changes in temperature.

The change of temperature, triggered by the mileage of the pedometer, draws a line between two circles. The more steps are taken, the more circles will be connected. The wearer has a visual indication of the amount of steps taken just by looking at the shirt.

The second concept uses lighting to provide the feedback. More steps equals more lit flowers.

Stefan build into his motivational fitness shirt the option to turn off the visual indication to avoid being embarrassed when everyone around you would see how lazy you have been again today.

Watch the video below to see the visual effect of the Walk! shirt:

I love this idea, can’t wait until Adidas will bring this to the market – also for men.

The Vital Jacket® is an intelligent wearable garment that is able to continuously monitor electrocardiogram (ECG) wave and Heart Rate as used in medical environment, high performance sports and fitness.

The company behind this futuristic Jacket/Shirt is Biodevices, S.A., a spin-off from IEETA (Institute of Electronics and Telematics Engineering of Aveiro / University of Aveiro, Portugal) with the mission of developing and commercializing biomedical solutions for diagnosis and monitoring support.

The Vital Jacket® is a wearable vital signs monitoring system that joins textiles with microelectronics. It was designed and developed to be a usable pragmatic approach for different clinical and normal life scenarios, in hospitals, home or on the move, that need continuous or frequent high quality vital signs monitoring.

The benefit of Bio-monitoring clothing is obvious: more freedom of movement and independence from stationary treatment for patients or elderly who need special care and quality data collection in high performance sport as well as for fitness enthusiasts.

There are currently two versions available, the HWM100 that stores data on a SD memory card for post-analysis on a PC. This version allows long term monitoring. Users can define heart rate limits and will be alerted through a vibration alarm embedded in the T-Shirt.

The second version is the HWM200 that allows realtime visualization where data is sent via Bluetooth to a PDA or smart phone.

Both VitalJacket versions are ready for pre-order at a price of €399.- / $635.44 (excluding PDA) on VitalJacket’s Website. Shipment is indicated as begin of 2008 so it should be very soon.