Wearable Sports Technology Takes Another Step Forward

Have you ever wanted to experience what it feels like to be a big name football player?  Do you empathise with your favourite team as they make a costly mistake and lose the game?  Do you feel elated when they win or excited when they almost make a goal? No? Well then you NEED this t-shirt!

Foxtel, an Australian telecommunications company, have apparently designed a shirt that uses technology that allows you to experience physical sensations that your favourite athlete might be feeling on the field.  For instance, the shirt applies pressure in order to copy a thumping heart, you feel impact, despair, exhaustion (perhaps sweaty armpits?) as well as adrenalin.

The information is sent via Bluetooth from an application (yes, there is even an app for physical sensations).  A lithium polymer cell battery powers the shirt.  This amazing shirt is available for users of Foxtel who are members of Australian Rules Football Club; however, the price of this product has not been disclosed!

The company is pretty cloudy about how this product works.  All we know is that ‘feedback motors’ are used to send sensations to the skin.  This is the complete opposite of sensors which takes information and stimulus from you and feeds it to a processing unit of some kind.  Rather, these motors deliver stimulus from the processing unit (in this case, the application) and forwards it to you!

The application is called Alert Shirt on iOS and Android so if this sounds like a ruse, the tricksters have covered their backs elaborately! Maybe, in the future, we won’t have to participate in games!  There will be a shirt for that!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=maHGf3LNGMs#t=2

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[Image via: eideias]

SOURCE: http://mashable.com/2014/03/12/alert-shirt-electronic/