Smart hoodie lets you secretly message people by touching the sleeve
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Teenagers in hoodies are stereotypically portrayed as uncommunicative.
But this could be about to change after a team of graduate students created a hooded sweatshirt that lets the wearer send subtle and covert messages.
Different pre-programmed texts can be sent using a number of gestures, so wearers can tell a friend they're free to chat or they're missing them, merely by touching their sleeve.
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Sending messages on the sly: Graduate students have created a hooded sweatshirt with built-in technology that allows the wearer to keep in touch by subtly sending a text. By touching the sides of her hood, designer Alina Balean (pictured) can send a text to her mother
SMART HOODIE GESTURES
The prototype hoodie is designed to respond to three gestures in order to send pre-programmed messages.
- In a demo video, touching the sides of the hood sent a text message to the wearer's mother, saying she missed her.
- Touching the sleeve notified her mother that she was ready to Skype.
- Rolling up the sleeve text her mother to tell her she was in class and was unable to talk.
The smart sweatshirt was created by students at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP).
The prototype hoodie has a GSM radio and sensors sewn inside it, allowing the piece of clothing to respond to different gestures, The Verge reported.
In a demonstration video, the wearer touches the hood and rolls up a sleeve to send messages to a pre-programmed contact.
Rucha Patwardhan and Alina Balean learned how to build a simple mobile phone using an Arduino board - a microcontroller.
It also features an Arduino GSM shield, which connects the Arduino to the internet using the GPRS wireless network.
They said they wanted to put 'the technology behind a cell phone into something truly wearable and every day,' and so created the 'smart hoodie'.
Smart inside: The prototype hoodie has a GSM radio and sensors sewn inside it (pictured), allowing the piece of clothing to respond to different gestures
ELECTRONIC FABRIC CHANGES COLOUR AND PATTERN OF CLOTHES
A textile designer in Budapest has taken the first steps to creating clothing that can change colour like a chameleon.
Judit Eszter Karpati's experimental fabric can change colour in seconds using a number of electronic devices.
She created the interactive fabric using computer programming, engineering and electronic devices.
The fabric consists of an 'arduino with 12V power supply and 20 custom PCBs [printed circuit boards] driving and controlling four industrial 24V DC power supplies.'
These heat two handmade woven pockets fitted with nichrome wires, and screen-printed with thermochromatic dying, which reveal the pre-programmed patterns.
Two slow moving textile 'displays' show the content. They react to environmental changes such as heat and pressure by changing colour and pattern.
Karpati's work could be one of the first steps in creating clothes and military uniforms that enable wearers to blend into changing backgrounds.
Balean wrote in a blog post that the first switch was concealed in the left sleeve of the hoodie so she could secretly send messages to her Facebook account.
'After that we tested switches with the hoodie and other sleeve. Gestures that used to require your fingers on a tiny piece of glass now are translated into everyday movement; buttons no more,' she said.
The duo then programmed the hoodie to send set text messages to Balean's mother, notifying her of her daughter's activities at university.
'If I rolled up my left sleeve it tells her I am in class and can't talk, if I put my hoodie on it tells her that I miss her, and if I push the right sleeve it lets her know I am free and can chat online,' she said.
The graduates believe their innovation could be the first step in producing a hoodie that can be used as a safety device, so that someone walking along in a bad area at night, for example, could subtly send a message about their whereabouts without attracting any unwanted attention.
'Iterations of this hoodie can be a safety device for individuals traveling alone, children or others that need to communicate discreetly,' Balean said.
Currently, the wearers of the hoodie need a certain amount of tech know-how to pre-programme messages, but in the future there could be an easy web interface to let users write messages and numbers so they could easily communicate using the clothing.
In a demonstration video, Balean touches the hood and sleeves of the garment, and rolls up a sleeve to send messages to her mother. For example, rolling up the sleeve sends a message (pictured) informing her mother she is in class and unable to talk
The graduates believe that their innovation could be the first step in producing a hoodie that can be used as a safety device, so that someone walking along in a bad area at night for example, could subtly send a message about their whereabouts. Here, Balean touches the hoodie's sleeve to send a message
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