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Polar's next fitness wearable is a smart shirt
In the good old days, the best way to get accurate body readings was to strap on a chest-worn heart-rate monitor and go out for a run. But companies like OMSignal and Hexoskin, among others, changed this by developing monitors that could be embedded in fabrics. It was this trend that led to the first and second waves of "smart" running shirts that we've seen at several previous CES shows. Now Polar, a company that made its name building chest straps, is getting in on the action with the Polar Team Pro Shirt.
Ralph Lauren made a great fitness shirt that also happens to be 'smart'
Ralph Lauren's PoloTech shirt is smarter than it looks. It's also more expensive. The tee combines the fashion label's preppy aesthetic with the ability to deliver live metrics (heart rate, breathing and steps) from the shirt to your iPhone. The tech built into it isn't completely new, but Polo has added extra value through a companion app that offers workouts tailor-made to how your body is reacting. Basically, then, your effort informs the workout. Recently, I fell out of love with wrist-based fitness trackers, but the eventual goal of those gadgets is to become something akin to Ralph Lauren's shirt: sportswear that you would have worn anyway, but smarter. There are some big caveats, but just as Nike's Fuelband helped catalyze the whole fitness tracker thing, the PoloTech shirt could be the start of yet another generation of fitness tech.
Indycar driver tests smart shirt to track the perils of racing
Japanese mobile giant NTT DoCoMo's Data arm has revealed that it quietly tested its futuristic smart clothing during Indycar races last year. The firm teamed up with driver Tony Kanaan to create a version of its Hitoe garment that's suitable for use in the sport. As before, the shirt is capable of monitoring its wearer's heart rate and muscle activity, learning valuable insights on how the competition affects the body. For instance, Kanaan's heart rate was found to spike when he brought the car to a stop, and while driving, had the same physical stresses as someone who was sprinting.
Your next smart shirt will make you look like an extra from 'Tron'
Cambridge Consultants is a research and development company from, yup, Cambridge in the UK, that acts as a sort of DARPA for the private sector. That's why you're just as likely to see the outfit producing sensors for the oil and gas industry as it is knocking out madcap tea machines, robotic basketball coaches or automatic beer taps. After a lunchtime trip to the pub, two of the company's oil and gas engineers wondered if it'd be possible to leverage its sensors know-how into a piece of fitness clothing that could offer would-be athletes an unprecedented level of detail.
Squeezing into OMsignal's smart shirt of the future
Thanksgiving is a time to remember things to be grateful for, stuff yourself with turkey and watch MST3k re-runs. But what happens the following day, when you wake up with a meat hangover that could kill a horse? That's the moment you'll stumble online, looking for new ways to lose weight and find OMsignal's biometric smart shirt. The fashionable piece is a sports-style compression garment that monitors your breathing, heart rate and step count, so I know that as I write this, I'm taking 18 breaths a minute and my heart is beating 76 times every 60 seconds. Neat, huh?
OMsignal's biometric shirt watches you breathe, tells your smartphone about it
Most fitness wearables wrap around your wrist or clip to your belt, but the folks at OMsignal have distilled the category down to its most basic form: the shirt. "We've been wearing clothing all our lives," company CEO and founder Stéphane Marceau says. "It's the most natural and therefore the ultimate "wearable" medium." He's got a point, but that isn't what makes OMsignal's shirts special. The garment includes sensors that measure the wearer's heart rate, breathing and movement and pipes all that data to their smartphone via Bluetooth, which can calculate calories burned, workout intensity and other metrics. All this is powered by a removable data module, of course, which can hold a charge for about 30 workouts. Just make sure to remove it before you put the shirt through the wash. Unfortunately the garment isn't cheap (about $200 for pre-orders) -- and only Men's sizes are available at launch -- but the company hopes to create a women's collection soon.
