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 …

Francesca Rosella and Ryan Genz, the creative force behind CuteCircuit are pushing the limits of wearable technology far into the future with their recent activities which ranges from illuminated stage-wear for artists to launching their own CuteStore for technology enhanced fashion.

In the ‘coming soon…’ section of the store we can find the famous Hug Shirt and the latest and coolest addition, the M-Dress.

The M (Mobile Phone) Dress is, as the name says, a mobile phone in form of a dress. That’s the coolest mobile phone form factor there will be on the market, surpassing the iPhone be far, at least from style perspective.

I am of course as curious as you our dear reader how this dressed up phone will work but according to CuteCircuit’s Website it does accept a standard SIM card which goes into a small slot underneath the label and the antenna is concealed in the hem of the dress. No mention which battery is used or where it will be stored in the dress.

The M-Dress will have the phone number of the SIM card you have used in the old days where people used plastic and metal boxes to make a phone call.

When the dress rings (or may be vibrating is more appropriate) raising the arm to your ear will open the call triggered by a motion sensor. Putting your arm down will close the call. Simple and beautiful.

CuteCircuit has developed special gesture recognition software to enable the smart M-Dress to work in an intuitive way, blending into the fabric of our digital life.

Lets hope CuteCircuit is also serving the other half of the population, the boys, with a similar futuristic designed piece of garment.

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]

I am truly impressed from e-Pressed, a project made from smart textiles created by a group of smart people: Anja Hertenberger, Barbara Pais, Danielle Roberts.

The aim of the e-Pressed project is to communicate negative emotions such as grief, sadness, pain, fear or anger in a new way, a way to create awareness in the wearer and in others and possible interaction between people.

Bio sensors placed around the shirt pick up the level of stress or anxiety of the wearer and indicate this via embedded LEDs.

Fast blinking indicates a high level of irritation and once the ‘therapy’, the interaction with another person via acupuncture points on the shirt starts, the LEDs flashing frequency slows down in sync with the relaxation level of the wearer until the light goes off, indicating a balanced emotional stage.

The shirt itself is made of two layers, inside and outside layer with the buttons of the pressure areas and the LED’s placed between the inner and outer garment layer.

The galvanic skin response sensor is connected to the Arduino board. The wearer of the shirt has to connect two fingers of his/her left hand to the sensor.

Check out the richly documented and highly interesting project work from the e-Pressed team which is already working on the next version including more soft bio sensors to get higher accuracy on the stress/ anxiety level reading of the wearer.

[via: Fashioning Technology]

‘Wear your true lifestyle‘ is a ‘Wearable Senses‘ project from Gordon Tiemstra, student at the Department of Industrial Design of the Eindhoven University of Technology, with the focus on a combination of teenagers, lifestyle, identity and smart fabrics.

Gordon started out by researching the problems teenager encounter with their identity. One of the results of his research was that teenagers in the age group 12 to 16 are very intensely dealing with how to present themselves and their visual appearance.

To present themselves through visual appearance, teenager focus on their clothing but what they often forget is how they present their body via posture. Especially during puberty keeping the correct posture is sometimes difficult since teenager grow relatively fast, feeling insecure with their changing body which often leads to deformation of the spine due to wrong postures over prolonged time.

Gordon’s solution to this problem: Fabric stretch sensors integrated in clothing capable of measuring the posture. If the wearer slides into a ‘lazy’, spine deforming posture the electrically conductive fabric will stretch beyond a certain threshold, indicating a correction is needed.

Once the smart clothing detects via a LilyPad the wearer’s need for posture correction it will signal this via vibration actuators which will give a soft, gentle reminder to straighten up, invisible to others but will be felt by the wearer.

I like the concept of combining therapeutic function with fashion with the use of electrically conductive stretch fabric which seems to be able to attack one of the big problems of correct posture especially during the teen years or people spending most of the working day behind a desk.

‘Wear your true lifestyle’ is a truly sensible, smart clothing concept.

Venturing around research activities into wearable electronic another European funded projects got my attention: the HealthWear project, a collaboration funded by the Directorate General Information Society of the European Commission with the aim to deliver a service that provides uninterrupted and ubiquitous monitoring of the health condition of individuals in rehabilitation phase.

Integrating monitoring function such as sensors for heart rate measurement, blood flow, perspiration, stress and temperature into special health care clothing provides more wearing comfort compared to sensor patches attached to the skin. Wearable health care systems give also more mobility to patients, improving their life style which in turn enhances the overall effectiveness of the treatment.

‘By embedding the sensors in a shirt, sweater or vest that patients feel comfortable wearing, and requiring only a mobile phone-sized device to gather and transmit the information, the system empowers patients to be more active and independent while letting caregivers check on them at anytime or in any place as necessary,‘ explains Theodore Vontetsianos, the head of the e-Health Unit at Sotiria General Chest Diseases Hospital in Athens, Greece.

As promising these research projects are they highlight the many ‘white spots’ wearable technologies still have and the need to be explored and developed. Explored in terms of reliability and explored in terms of manufacturability on a scale that allows reasonable pricing and accessibility to the public.

The wearable technology field is (still) full of challenges and opportunities along the product creation value chain. It’s up to the creative and adventurous to take on these challenges to enrich peoples’ life and oneself.

[via: Physorg]

A team of very creative people developed back in 2004 a kind of e-Textile Lego: the bYOB (build Your Own Bag) concept which essentially consists of a set of intelligent fabric patches that can be combined to form different bags or other fashion accessories.

The different, smart fabric patches contain different functions like different Lego blocks have different functions and it is up to the creativity of the user to replicate existing products or form completely new designs and functions.

It’s the ultimate customization, giving almost limitless options to configure and reconfigure as, like with Lego blocks, a once formed and used design can be taken apart in the single patches (blocks) and are ready to form a new object.

A brilliant idea that deserves a revival considering the advances in e-textiles and wearable technologies that have been developed since the creation of bYOB in 2004.

The visionary team from the Object-Based Media Group at the MIT Media Lab, Gauri Nanda, Adrian Cable and V. Michael Bove Jr. in an advisory role went even a step further in defining and shaping interactive clothing by envisioning a ‘conversation between a handbag, a scarf and a dress‘.

‘As a woman is about to leave her house, her handbag may solicit the weather forecast from the humidity sensor on its fellow smart curtain.

It might deliver the news of an impending downpour by saying “I think it might rain. Go get your umbrella.” And after deliberating with her coat pocket, the handbag may use ambient light to caution the user if she’s forgotten her cell phone.‘

Our future wardrobe and bags, items we definitely will not forget before leaving the house, can help us to make sure items we do forget occasionally like cell-phone, key or the umbrella is taken care off by our second skin – the intelligent clothing that checks by itself is everything is present.

Below video shows how the bYOB modules connect:

Maybe one day our clothing takes care of our fashion-style where the handbag cries: ‘don’t wear those shoes with me‘ or the dress tells you ‘no way to go with that bag‘. Smart clothing will help us to leave home in perfect style and we don’t mix things that do not get together – fashion wise.

PS: it’s not just women who forget things or miss-mix outfit, intelligent clothing is for men as helpful as for women.

Adidas is taking the lead when it comes to highly fashionable and very smart fitness clothing. After the launch of the AdiStar Fusion selection in 2007, Adidas expanded their smart fitness apparel collection adding different styles for men and women.

The latest collection of the Adidas Fusion and the new miCoach fitness apparel range use textile electrodes seamless integrated into the shirts and tops fabric taking away the ‘not so favorable’ look when using HRM and the highly uncomfortable wear feel of conventional chest-strap like HRM devices.

Adidas teamed also up with Samsung Electronics and made the intelligent fitness apparel range compatible with the miCoach training system that includes a quad band slider phone from Samsung acting as a fitness trainer, a heart rate monitor tuning into the rhythm of the user’s body, a stride sensor to measure speed and distance while running (when the miCoach sports shoe) and a web workout journal to help people design and keep track of fitness programs.

A highly sophisticated system linking the data collected from the smart clothing to online services for performance tracking and sharing with team members of friends.

An almost perfect scenario which I can envision interactive, intelligent clothing will be heading.

Adidas smart fitness apparel also work with Polar’s Wearlink sensor so if you own already a Polar system you just need to select one of the gorgeous looking fitness fashion shirts and tops and you are good to go.

There are many online shops selling the Adidas smart fitness fashion collection so we just give one example of where to start looking around.

Upgrade your fitness wardrobe to be ready for the the coming spring/summer season.

Adidas is the first place to check out when it comes to truly smart, intelligent fitness apparel and shoes.