Digital technology surrounds our homes, our workplace and our leisure hours. Now the digital revolution is poised to envelop our bodies. Electronic garb has captured public imagination since 1930s serialized comics like "Buck Rogers" and "Dick Tracy." Although technological advances have made breakthroughs in production and durability of textiles, added electronic functionality of clothing has lagged behind advances in computing, communications and appliances. That could soon change
The Hug Shirt is a shirt that makes people send hugs over distance! Embedded in the shirt there are sensors that feel the strength of the touch, the skin warmth and the heartbeat rate of the sender and actuators that recreate the sensation of touch, warmth and emotion of the hug to the shirt of the distant loved one.
The Hug Shirt is a Bluetooth accessory for Java enabled mobile phones. Hug Shirts don’t have any assigned phone number, all the data goes from the sensors’ Bluetooth to your mobile phone and your mobile phone delivers the hug data to your friend’s phone and it is seamlessly transmitted Bluetooth to his or her shirt! Sending hugs is as easy as sending an SMS and you will be able to send hugs while you are on the move.
Adults, especially elderly people living far away from their families, deprived of tactile contact for a long period of time will tell you just how depressing it feels. A hug, a handshake, a pat on the back, and a kiss are all very important and bring us close to others.
It seems that the arrival of the hug-shirt is loved everywhere. CNN and TIME have news coverage of its dawn. Via.
