Even Your Workout Clothes Can Now Be “smart”
Our clothes are typically passive companions on our adventures, but their role may be changing as technology continues to become more integrated into every aspect of our lives. It was only a matter of time, but now smart clothing is becoming a reality – from socks that monitor diabetes patients to shirts that track heart rate. For now, the industry has primarily adopted this technology as wearable health devices, but the industry (and government) is starting to realize the magnitude of the potential of smart clothing.
New category of fitness “wearable devices”
There is an entire industry built around fitness “wearables” such as rings, watches and other monitoring devices. These devices are mainly designed to monitor things like heart rate, temperature, and metrics that companies claim can measure sleep quality . Smart clothing, because it covers a larger area of your body, can collect even more data and apply actions such as vibration over a larger area.
The Nadi X yoga pants have accelerometers and haptic motors woven into the fabric. The docking station is located behind your left knee, and at the beginning of the exercise you connect the microcontroller to it. The controller communicates via Bluetooth with your phone, reporting five different data points to measure your posture, and then guides you with gentle vibrations transmitted via haptic motors located along the length of the pants. The goal is to teach you how to perform yoga poses correctly.
Sensoria socks have built-in pressure sensors along the ball and heel of the sock and report this as a heat map in your app, which can determine how your foot hits the ground as you walk and run. The app also reports your cadence using a metronome user interface and provides real-time voice feedback to help you achieve your desired pace and correct your foot strike.
Under Armor is introducing a line of clothing that claims to help muscles recover by using a bioceramic lining in the clothing to convert body heat into far-infrared energy, which is supposed to promote muscle recovery. At CES 2024, Hyvle debuted WE-STIM leggings , which use a similar idea to Under Armour: the fabric uses silver-coated conductive nanothreads, which they say can convert body energy into microelectrical stimulation. While the technology itself may be a miracle, the actual impact of these products on health and fitness is debatable. For example, our senior health editor Beth Skwarecki pointed out to me that their claimed benefits are similar to those found with non-electronic compression pants. The company’s published studies do not appear rigorous enough to make such a distinction. However, these early entries illustrate the potential of future products. While you wouldn’t want to rely solely on these products for medical or fitness advice, they can be a tool you use alongside professional advice.
Smart clothing can help improve health and affordability
Accessibility is the sweet spot for smart technology: it can help solve problems that people face on their own.Siren socks use miniature temperature sensors that continuously send information collected from the socks to healthcare professionals to help monitor diabetic patients, since temperature shifts can be a sign of inflammation and foot ulcers are a common problem for diabetics.
An entire subcategory of smart clothing called Enabling Tech Clothing expands on the idea of adaptable clothing, using technology to help people living with disabilities. While actual examples don’t appear to exist yet, there is potential to use the same technology found in the yoga leggings mentioned above, but providing vibrations for those with sensitivities. Similarly, clothing with GPS tracking (as a safety feature for vulnerable people with memory problems) is not yet available.
Technology could create safer uniforms
In 2023, the Director of National Intelligence announced a program to research the integration of smart clothing for security purposes. It gives me great joy to tell you that the program is called SMART ePANTS (Electrically Powered and Networked Smart Textile Systems). Who said government has no humor? The goal of the program is to “develop clothing with embedded audio, video and sensor geolocation systems that have the same stretch, bendability, washability and comfort as conventional textiles.” All kidding aside, imagine gear for first responders that monitors vital signs as well as signs of distress, or uniforms that can provide warmth or cooling, or detect chemicals. Imagine equipment for hospital staff that can monitor for infectious diseases. All this is possible.