Smart apparel: Bringing wearable sensor networks to application

Xenoma, wearHEALTH, a research group from Technische Universität Kaiserslautern (TUK), and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), have announced a collaboration that combines smart apparel with highly-developed motion capturing technology which brings wearable sensorics close to various applications in sports, health and industry. The fusion of Xenoma’s e-skin smart apparel with wearHEALTH’s and DFKI’s software technology create one of the most advanced motion capture solutions demonstrated to date. The innovate concept will be presented at the upcoming CES in Las Vegas.

The system includes sensor calibration and magnetometer-free motion capturing algorithms from DFKI and wearHEALTH and combines it with Xenoma’s e-skin smart apparel which can be used in everyday life. This enables a variety of applications in rehabilitation, sport, work safety and wherever detailed and robust motion capturing is required.

For the first step of collaboration, Xenoma developed a smart pants integrating seven 6-axis IMUs. It takes less than a moment to wear and track various kinds of user’s repeating and quick movements continuously. Furthermore, this solution does not interfere users’ movements and is not affected by magnetic environment like machines and facilities, which is important for use cases in industrial environment.

Dr. Gabriele Bleser, head of wearHEALTH: "Xenoma's hardware represents a perfect integration of sensor technology into clothing, so that intelligent technologies can actually be worn like ordinary everyday clothing."

Xenoma has been working on projects in sports, fitness, workers’ safety and rehabilitation and plans to integrate the algorithms from the German collaborators into products and services provided by Xenoma or in collaboration with their partners. "The cooperation offers us excellent opportunities to transfer innovative technologies into everyday applications", says Prof. Dr. Didier Stricker, head of DFKI’s Research Department Augmented Vision.

"Unlike many others, wearHEALTH kept developing their tracking algorithms magnetometer-free in order to be applied in the actual use cases. I am convinced that this collaboration provides a great usability for industry users," said Ichiro Amimori, Co-Founder & CEO of Xenoma. "Xenoma’s e-skin is developed to be used in a daily life. The technology of wearHEALTH and DFKI allows us to insightfully help athletes, persons under rehab and factory workers."

REHACARE.com; Source: German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI)