Combining sportswear and electronics can open up new ways of making training more effective, safer and fun. Fashion design students at Shih Chien University, together with electronic engineers from neighbouring National Taiwan University, took on this creative challenge in a recent 10 day workshop. The outcome was broad range of working garments, from a jacket that gives feedback on posture and arm stability for Olympic target shooting, to a basket ball top that celebrates a basket, to a shoes that measure your cycling cadence and foot position, through to a dancers top with feedback on arm position.
Interestingly, many of the garments were connected. That is using Low Energy Bluetoot (BLE) the garments could be configured or feedback to an app on the users or coaches smartphone.
The following is a short student video of the workshop
Here we see the shooting jacket in preparation and in final use.
The dance top going through its paces
Early prototyping for an archery jacket
Hiding the wires, working on prototype of basketball top
The workshop part of the fashion design students master programme and was run by technologist Paul Gough
Previous workshops going back to 2010 can be found here