GPS Shoe for Alzheimer Patients
Getting lost is a common problem for Alzheimer’s patients and their caretakers. They often forget the way when going out on walks and can’t remember how to get home. In this context, location-based technologies are an helpful way to keep track of patients.
GTX Corp has developed the GPS Shoe, a pair of sneakers embedded with GPS technology that allow caregivers to track patients via a computer or smartphone.
Source: Nextweb
The world’s first air purifying dress
Catalytic Clothing, a collaboration between the London College of Fashion, University of Sheffield, and the University of Ulster, has recently presented the first prototype of a dress that can purportedly absorb airborne pollutants. A thin layer of space-age, pollution-absorbing concrete mixture is sprayed onto the “Herself” dress. Wearing the dress automatically means that you are helping to save the environment, simply by walking around and being fashionable!
However, the “Herself” dress is highly experimental and is only inteded to illustrate – in artistic form – the idea that textiles can help eliminate certain pollutants from the air. Unfortunately, it is doubtful that an actual, wearable version of the dress will be made.
Check out the dress here!
Wearable batteries: energy-generating T-shirts
If it is up to the scientists at the University of Texas at Dallas, you can soon charge your mobile phone by plugging it into your T-shirt!
The university is researching ways to weave energy-transmitting yarn into ready-to-wear material. So far, the scientists have discovered a way to create energy generating textiles from powder-infused carbon nanotubes. The nanotubes in use will be able to support superconducting particles, such as magnesium powder, with a more manageable form without binders or lasers. If the scientists are successful, this energy-transmitting yarn could be fashioned into lightweight batteries you can wear. This concept of wearable batteries that look like regular clothing would mean that you no longer have to search for a power outlet could and look fashionable at the same time!
Intimacy dress
For his project Intimacy, Dutch artists Daan Roosegaarde created a dress made of flexible e-foils which can be either opaque or transparent depending on the currents flowing through them. Intimacy was developed by Studio Roosegaarde, V2_Lab and fashion designer Maartje Dijkstra
The Intimacy dress takes our notion personal space to a next level: the closer someone approaches, the more transparent the dress becomes. As such, the garment becomes a sort of second skin that allows the body to become an ‘interface’.
If you want to learn more, check out the interview with Daan Roosegaarde
Source: NextNature, V2, Fashioning Technology
The “Exmobaby pajamas” with built-in sensors
PSFK.com features an article in which a new hi-tech Pajama design is described. ome. The Exmobaby pajamas is developed by Exmovere Holdings, Inc. and are made to help avert sudden infant death syndrome: “the pajamas have sensors built into the fabric which monitor a babies’ heart beat, emotional state and behavior. The information is then relayed to parents, who can keep a virtual eye on their babies while they sleep.”
For more information, see: http://www.psfk.com/2010/09/parents-can-rest-easy-with-new-baby-pjs.html
Intelligent textile: d30′s Lab’s “superhero suit”
In 2007 already, PSFK.com featured a video which demonstrates a intelligent textile product which is flexible and soft but on impact is instantly hard and retains energy from an impact, protecting the wearer. It is created by Brit company d30 Lab and you can read an extensive article about it here.
Watch the video and see how d30 Lab’s “superhero suit” works!