You don’t have to be a forward-thinking fashion designer or scientist to produce tech-savvy clothing. Need evidence? Just look at the smart hoodie developed by New York University grad students Alina Balean and Rucha Patwardhan. They’ve integrated a cellular-equipped Arduino board and switches into the wearable, letting you send messages through discreet movements; you can cover your head to text your mom, or roll up your sleeve to post on Facebook. Balean adds that the hoodie could be useful in almost any situation where you’d rather not broadcast your intentions. You could let friends know that you’re threatened without tipping off a would-be assailant, for instance.
Wearable electronics don’t just have to go on your wrist or your face, it turns out: students in New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) have designed what they call the “Smart Hoodie,” a hooded sweatshirt with a GSM radio sewn in that can respond to different gestures. The creators show three of those gestures in their demonstration — touching the hood, touching a sleeve, and rolling up a sleeve — each of which send a different text message to a pre-programmed contact. The demo focuses on staying connected to family members, but it’s easy to see how clothing connected to the cell network could have more utilitarian uses: take text-to-911, for example, which is in the middle of rolling out and could offer wearers the ability to covertly notify emergency services when they know they’re going to be walking through a bad area. It might seem like a niche product, but big players are already exploring the softer side of wearables: Intel showed off a connected shirt at Recode’s Code Conference recently, and Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group has taken it a step further with talk of electronic tattoos.
