Sep 15 2010
New and avant-garde styles of garments are soon going to be in vogue, with the use of sensors in clothing industry. These smart garments include motion-detecting pants, hoodiebuddies, smart sneakers, therapeutic threads, intelligent undies, mind-readers and mental merinos.
A HoodieBuddie is a sweatshirt, with earphones fixed to the end of drawstrings of the Hoodie. The user could connect the ear plugs, which are machine washable, to a cell phone, ipod or MP3 player through an embedded earphone jack designed in the hoodie’s front right side pocket. This whole ensemble is totally problem-free, The new entrant into the trousers field is the motion detecting pants, which consist of normal pants with in built sensors woven into the pants. They were developed by Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and are said to be of utility value to people, with high risks of falling leading to injuries. The sensors could transfer data on flexibility, rotation and speed to a computer, and assist in decreasing the amount of injuries due to falls.
Nike has crafted a sensor into running shoes, to track down parameters such as speed, distance and number of calories burnt, and transmits these data to an ipod and analysis of the run could be obtained.
Therapeutic threads crafted into prototype garments with built in wireless sensors, are the newest rage. Clothes designed by London's Goldsmiths College and Montreal's Concordia University could easily give parameters such as temperature, heart rate, stress, breathing and so on. The stress is depicted by a galvanic skin response, which is in actuality a shift in the electrical properties of the skin. All these data are then transferred through the wearer’s smart phone, to an online database, whose function would be to download music, images and songs to the clothes’ built in speaker and LED display, and thus assist in transforming and lightening the user’s mood.
Numetrex, a US firm has designed intelligent undies, a brainy bra for ladies and brainy underwear for the lads. The bra has silver coated electrodes and electronic modules, to sense the user’s pulse, and transport the data into a wristwatch, so that the heart rate etc. could be monitored, especially during exercise sessions. Biosensors have been imprinted on to the waistbands of the underpants, to help monitor enzyme NADH and Hydrogen Peroxide, linked with biomedical processes. Scientists propose that they could be utilized to monitor the combatant’s health and prospects during wartime.
A novel neuroheadset, The Emotiv EPOC, has been created employing sensors, to study the electrical signals emitted by the brain, recognizing almost 30 different emotions, actions and expressions, inclusive of humor, excitement, frustration etc. The headset is attached wirelessly to a PC.
Sources: BBC