Textile Integrated Wearable Technologies for Sports and Medical Applications

Abstract

Innovative and pervasive monitoring possibilities are given using textile integration of wearable computing components. We present the FitnessSHIRT (Fraunhofer IIS, Erlangen, Germany) as one example of a textile integrated wearable computing device. Using the FitnessSHIRT, the electric activity of the human heart and breathing characteristics can be determined. Within this chapter, we give an overview of the market situation, current application scenarios, and related work. We describe the technology and algorithms behind the wearable FitnessSHIRT as well as current application areas in sports and medicine. Challenges using textile integrated wearable devices are stated and addressed in experiments or in explicit recommendations. The applicability of the FitnessSHIRT is shown in user studies in sports and medicine. This chapter is concluded with perspectives for textile integrated wearable devices.