At the Las Vegas CES, it’s show time for the connected D-shirt!
Published 6 January 2015 by Ewen Chardronnet
With 120 firms sent to the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas, France carries high the European high-tech flag for the great world event of new technologies. Amongst the innovations promised at the 2015 Awards, a connected sport shirt is bragging.
Cityzen Sciences, already laureate of the connected object Award and the Everyday Health Award for Innovation at the 2014 CES (Consumer Electronic Show) in Las Vegas, returns this year with its D-shirt, a connected sport shirt. The firm is once again nominated to obtain one of the CES Innovation Awards in 2015. Wearable project favourite of the vast technological get-together, this item of clothing incorporates loads of sensors measuring physical activity translated into indicators (heart rate, speed, respiratory rate, intensity of effort, movements…), then transcribed and interpreted in real-time on a Smartphone. You no longer need to fix sensors everywhere when you go for a jog: the project is truly surfing on the explosion of the quantified self, this somewhat obsessional trend consisting of permanently checking one’s fitness.
Under the T-shirt lies a whole industrial project on the move. The firm from Lyon heading the intelligent clothing program, Smart Sensing, and a consortium bringing together French textile and electronics specialists are logically targeting professional and amateur sport. The PABA basketball team already uses this technology even though the D-shirt has not been commercialised yet.
The company created in 2008 by Jean-Luc Errant thinks big to become “ a world leader in integration of embedded intelligence on all types of fabric”. No more, no less. Its means measure up to its ambitions. It announces 100 million euros in fundraising for early 2015, following the signature of a partnership with the Japanese sport giant Asics for the development of a connected T-shirt that will be introduced to the market in a few months. According to the French newspaper Libération, this item of clothing designed for long-distance runners will be launched during the next New York marathon. There is no stopping Cityzen Sciences: a second agreement would be in the signing process with another Japanese actor in textile.