Also called intelligent clothing, smart textile, or smart clothing is becoming a major trend within the sports and wearable industries. Their adoption is mainly driven by several advantages as well as athlete’s improved performance. Smart clothes are designed to serve both average elite and amateur athlete.
Measuring performance
In addition to measuring athletes’ performance, smart clothing is used to boost the experience in virtual reality games. In addition, they are used to improve computer-generated imagery in cinematography, help with physical therapy, and monitor worker or driver fatigue.
These high-tech clothes can measure movements in real-time using flexible thread sensors. In the sports industry, athletes could attach these sensors to tattoos to measure health and performance.
Smart clothing is simply fabrics that can sense changes in the environment. These changes can be magnetic, electrical, mechanical, and thermals. Smart clothing has sensors that collect changes in the surroundings and respond accordingly. These high-tech clothing integrate clothing and textile with software and electronics.
In recent years, the wearable industry has been growing. Many industry players like Runtastic, Garmin, Polar, Nike, and Fitbit are earning billions in annual revenue and profits from the sale of wearable gadgets. However, wearable gadgets seem to be overtaken by smart textile as they offer the same functionality and, in many cases, offer more accurate results.
However, industry players agree that wearables are here to stay. This is because they allow users to read measurements from the sensors.
Why smart textiles may overtake wearable devices
Many benefits come with the use of smart textiles. Key among them is the improvement in human performance. In sports, the underlying factor behind physicals exercise is the improvement in human performance. This is true for both professional and amateur athletes.
In addition, smart textiles will help in the improvement of users’ health. Sensors are able to measure various body functions like muscle and joint movements, lung capacity and perspiration, breathing, and heart rate, among others. These pieces of data are collected and analyzed to propose the right nutrition and medication to supplement your physical exercise. This improves the user’s health and performance in sports.
