Skip to main content

Cityzen smart shirt tracks your health, recharges during washing

By
Rightly or wrongly, the French are known for clothing designs that are often less than practical. Now, however, French company Cityzen Sciences has won the CES 2014 Inclusive Innovation in Everyday Health award for its development of a Smart Sensing fabric woven with integral micro-sensors – these add the practical benefit of monitoring the health and fatigue levels of the wearer.
The Smart Sensing fabric reads body heat, respiration rate, heart rate, and motion through location via GPS. "The fabric can be made into any clothing; gloves, shirts, pants, you name it," said Gilbert Reveillon, Cityzen's international managing director.
The new smart fabric combines sensors, fabric, distributed computation, and a small battery-powered transmitter into a unit that links in real time to a smartphone. The phone runs an app that stores and analyzes data from the fabric, showing if the person wearing the garment is tired, stressed, or in the path of an imminent heart attack. Obvious applications are for people who find themselves in extreme conditions, such as athletes, first responders, and soldiers.
Smart Sensing fabric, which costs perhaps 30 to 40 percent more than ordinary material, can be safely laundered and ironed. Additional sensors can be added to the fabric, as compatible versions are developed. Such information as blood oxygen, tidal volume (the amount of air flowing in and out of the lungs when breathing normally), and perhaps eventually blood glucose levels could make such fabrics vital systems in monitoring people's day-to-day health.
Perhaps the cleverest part of Smart Sensing fabric is still under development. Cityzen is working on a recharging system for the fabric, that receives most of its energy when the clothing is washed. This is a perfect use for a motion-driven recharging system – can you think of a better environment for collecting mechanical energy than a washing machine?
Smart Sensing fabric is expected to reach the commercial market later this year. More information is available in the video below.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Silent headset lets users quietly commune with computers

By
Advances in voice recognition technology have seen it become a more viable form of computer interface, but it's not necessarily a quieter one. To prevent the click-clacking of keyboards being replaced by noisy man-machine conversations, MIT researchers are developing a new system called AlterEgo that allows people to talk to computers without speaking and listen to them without using their ears. At first glance, the AlterEgo headpiece looks like the product of a design student who didn't pay attention in class. Instead of the familiar combination of an earpiece and microphone, the device is a cumbersome white plastic curve like the jawbone of some strange animal that hangs off the wearer's ear and arcs over to touch the chin. It might look strange, but it's based on some fairly sophisticated technology. Inside the Alterego are electrodes that scan the jaw and face from neuromuscular signals produced when the wearer thinks about verbalizing words without
1 comment
Read more

Qualcomm showcases the Snapdragon S4 ahead of Mobile World Congress

By
We’ve already heard about Qualcomm’s latest processor, the Snapdragon S4 , which will be quad-core and utilize LTE. Qualcomm took the time to give us some details ahead of Mobile World Congress. The new SoC now supports up to three cameras (two in the back for 3D and one front-facing), 20-megapixels, and recording video at 1080p (30fps). We can also expect zero shutter lag, 3A processing (autofocus, auto exposure and auto white balance), and improved blink/smile detection, gaze estimation, range finding and image stabilization. Last but not least, it supports gesture detection/control, augmented reality , and computer vision (via Qualcomm’s FastCV). Hit the break for a couple of videos featuring image stabilization and gestures.
Post a Comment
Read more

GitHub launches new mobile app for Android and iOS platforms

By
Github is one of the leading software development platform in the world that helps developer community to build, discover and share better software. Github, owned by tech giant Microsoft Corporation provides developers with a large number of tools and resources to get their projects off the ground. Github released its new free mobile app for Android and iOS platforms after several months of beta testing. The app is primarily designed to help the developer community to manage their projects when they not using their PC, letting them organize tasks, respond to the comments, give feedback on issues etc.   Github notifications shows up in an inbox like the E Mail notifications, you can swipe to wrap up a task or can save the modifications to come back later. This can be new favourite way for the developers to organize their tasks.  The app features a clean, intuitive, beautiful UI, with all attractive features you would expect from a mobile version of the platform, incl
Post a Comment
Read more