Smart clothes offer emotional aid

Smart clothes offer emotional aid
2010 06 07

Smart clothes could soon be helping their wearers cope with the stresses of modern life.

The prototype garments monitor physiological states including temperature and heart rate.

The clothes are connected to a database that analyses the data to work out a person’s emotional state.

Media, including songs, words and images, are then piped to the display and speakers in the clothes to calm a wearer or offer support.

You’ve had a hard day at the office, your spouse is currently over 2,000 miles away and now your boss says he wants you to work late. It’s all you can do to contain your anger until you get into the bathroom, whereupon you let loose with a string of red-faced, high-cardio profanity. At that point, your spouse talks to you via your shirt. “Take it easy, it’s all right,” they coo from your collar, as they play your favorite song, and photos of them scroll across your chest. Hey, it could happen. No, really, it could happen, thanks to the Wearable Absence project. Researchers involved in the program are working on developing intelligent textiles, that comfort the wearer by evoking memories of absent loved ones. Source

Created as part of an artistic project called Article from Wearable Absence the clothes are made from textiles woven with different sorts of wireless sensors. These can track a wide variety of tell-tale biological markers including temperature, heart rate, breathing and galvanic skin response.

Data is gathered passively and used to trigger a response from a web-based database previously created by the wearer. The clothes connect to the web via a smartphone.

When the wearer is detected as being in a particular emotional state, the database will send media to the clothes to help try to change a person’s mood

To accomplish this, the clothes are fitted with display made of LEDs and have speakers built in to the hood. The display can show scrolling text or simple images and the speakers can replay music, sounds or pre-recorded messages from friends or family.

See the video.

Developed by Barbara Layne from Concordia University in Canada and Janis Jefferies from Goldsmiths College’s Digital Studios, the prototype garments were shown at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences held in Montreal from 28 May - 3 June.

Earlier work by Professor Layne created jackets that knew when their owners were touching and changed the messages being displayed on the LED displays sewn into them.

Article from: news.bbc.co.uk

Video from: YouTube.com

Good luck getting that through an airport! ;)

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