The potential applications go well beyond military and emergency use, though. Several universities have begun looking at ways to turn the traditional soccer kit into a kind of LifeShirt monitoring system that would feed a continuous stream of information about players to the team physician on the sidelines, thereby allowing coaches to know if a player is becoming winded even before the player himself knows. Sport teams may soon become wireless radio networks. The University of Athens has also been trying to incorporate electronic sensors into the soccer ball itself as a way of verifying if it had, in fact, crossed the goal line.
And not just soccer kits, already shoes are becoming "Smart." Adidas announced in May that it has created what the company claims is the world's first "smart shoe" by mating it with a computer chip. The chip is implanted in the arch of the sole and is capable of making 5 million calculations per second to adjust the heel cushioning depending on the runner's size and stride. The Adidas 1 is scheduled to hit stores shelves in December with a price tag of US$250.
Sport gear outfitter O'Neill recently teamed up with Infineon Electronics to create The Hub, a ski jacket that incorporates an MP3 player and Bluetooth module for controlling a mobile phone. Headphones are built into the hood and a microphone is sewn into the collar. On the sleeve is a flexible keypad to operate the MP3 player or answer your jacket if you get a call. The Hub will be sold in Europe this coming winter and will retail for US$638. It promises to withstand rain, snow and freezing temperatures, and can be thrown into the wash without worrying about short-circuiting your US$600 jacket.
The MP3 player will provide eight hours of playback time before having to plug the jacket's USB cable into your PC. However, Infineon is already experimenting with what may well be the way future wearware is powered: by body heat. A miniature thermogenerator uses the temperature difference between the body surface and the surrounding clothing to generate electrical power -- a technology previously used in space exploration. It generates enough electricity to power the microelectronic chips embedded in the jacket. Researchers are also looking at fabrics capable of generating power as they flex.
The potential applications of computerizing clothing are limitless. But with new technology comes the responsibility to use it wisely. The "Firefly Dress" encrusted LEDs into a sheer fabric that changed colors as the wearer moved. I saw it modeled at the 1998 SIGGRAPH convention and remember one man's reaction to it. "If my wife had one of those," he said, "I'd finally have a reason to wear my light-up tie!"
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