Smart Fabrics Measure Your Pulse, Breathe, Temperature and Athletic Performances

Soon, smart fabrics will tell how you cope with combat situations or sport performances.

The new fabric designed by New Zealand firm Zephyr offers information on heart beat, skin temperature, posture, activity and breathing rate with the simple worn over the skin.

The new fabric could allow athletes to assess their performance by measuring in an extremely simple way their physiological reactions.

Zephir's products that can do this are a bio-harness (a length of fabric worn around the chest) and a shoe pod (a smart insole), both fabricated from a patented textile that has the sensors incorporated into it that once paired with electronics, can record and broadcast physiological information.

"The company expects the products to find a role in the health, defense and medical markets. Already, Zephyr had signed a deal with the US Department of Defense to provide some of its special forces with the bioharness. The device would enable officers to see what physiological state their men were in," said Steven Small, director of business development for Zephyr.

"The work that Zephyr had done on the fabric had taken it out of the laboratory and enabled it to be put to much more practical use. All these tools exist today but only in laboratories, which would mean they hook you up to wires to measure you," he said.

"With our tools, the doctor gives them to you and you go away and use them for a week."

The bioharness could also be employed when testing new drugs, assessing the effects they induce in the body.

The data recorded by the device can be transmitted weekly or gathered directly to a nearby laptop.

"The smart insole, or shoe pod, could find a role as a training aid for runners", said Small.

The shoe pod measures the size of a person's step, the points of maxim pressure, where they push off from and the rhythm of their foot movement.

"It could be a great coaching tool for sprinters," he said.

The smart sole could also be used by patients recovering from operations to replace a knee or hip, as it can assess how a person's gait is modified by the intervention.

But probably, the commercial hit of it will be brought by the fact that it can be employed by amateur athletes willing to measure their personal performances.

"The next step is to use Java [a computer language] to connect it to a cellphone. Then you have an automatic connection to the internet so by the time you are home you can log on and see how you did," said Small.

"The bioharness is being used by some of the keen runners among Zephyr staff. It's created quite a competition because they can go to the website and measure their progress against everyone else," he added.