TECHNOLOGY & SPORT: Adidas Adizero F50

It was never so easy to track your speed and distance during the training!
Specially for sport addicted and tech adoptable people Adidas invented and launched a new family of product with a technology miCoach SPEED_CELL.
The Adidas miCoach SPEED_CELL is a clever little gadget that combined with the MiCoach Soccer app should give athletes and novices alike some added motivation to exercise even more than usual.
http://micoach.adidas.com

The chip measures the average speed, maximum speed, number of sprints, distance, steps and stride rates of the user at any time. Average speeds and maximum speeds are recorded every second and every five seconds respectively while distance is also tracked at high intensity levels. All the more impressively, it easily stores up to 7 hours of information so there’s no need to sync it up too frequently. It’s a very clever piece of kit.
Intelligent technology isn’t much use if it’s not easy to use though. Fortunately, the Adidas miCoach SPEED_CELL is very simple to set up. Once synced, there are two choices as to how to attach the Adidas miCoach SPEED_CELL to a shoe. With the relevant Adidas boot (such as the Adidas F50 AdiZero) or any shoes where you can clip it.

TECH & FASHION

Talking about wearable technologies we mostly mean techs expressed in accessories as watches, glasses, jewelry, etc. Why would we never think about casual clothes or evening gowns?
This was the question that inspired Hussein Chalayan to create his magic collection, the performance of which reminds more illusionists’ than fashion show.
Collaborating with an engineering firm called 2d:3d, he created prototype dresses with embedded motors, microcontrollers and microswitches.
Thus the show hosted dresses that have a moving neckline, can become more revealing and dresses that can zip and unzip themselves in a variety of ways.

The director of 2d:3d commented the work on the collection:

“Basically, the dresses were driven electronically by controlled, geared motors. We made little pads for the models. Within these containers we had all the battery packs, controlling chips-the microcontrollers and microswitches - and little geared motors. The motors we used were tiny, about a third of the size of a pencil and nine millimeters in diameter. Each of the motors had a little pulley, and the pulley was then attached to this monofilament wire which was fed through hollow tubes. Running everywhere, carrying these little cables, each doing its little job, lifting things up or releasing little linked metallic plates. There was a huge amount of stuff going on beneath the clothes”.

Not yet wearable but already desirable by millions of women worlwide these dresses certainly changed the world of haute couture.

The next big thing

Per Wikipedia, wearable technology is clothing or accessories that incorporate computer and advanced electronic technologies. The design incorporates practical functions and features, but may also have a purely critical or aesthetic agenda.

Analysts from Credit Suisse suggest that wearable technology is going to be the next big thing in the technology space. Their latest data on the topic note that it could amount to a $50 billion dollar industry in the next 3-5 years. That pales in comparison to the much larger smartphone or tablet markets today, but imagine the possibilities. What if all of the sudden you could dictate text messages to a wristband while seeing a visual display of responses on the inside of your bluetooth enabled glasses. Google Glass is taking us there sooner than we think.

Currently the wearable tech space is focused on the health and fitness sector. The report, which is referenced by several sources on the web (but hard to find in it's original form) comes out of their semiconductor analyst desk. Think, the processing chips for this new sector will have to be innovative, affordable, and durable, hence these analyst's interest. On the Credit Suisse website they go into some of the potential uses and sectors which wearable technology could have an impact. In brief, the marketing potential and information that your clothing could share with the designer or manufacturer may soon be limitless. Auto or health insurance companies might build technology into your seatbelt to track your use of it, speed, etc.

Wearable technology certainly isn't new. GPS watches have been around for a while. The head gear worn by the Predator in the 1987 Schwarzenegger classic is a perfect example of wearable technology. This shows we have been dreaming these things up for generations, but it seems as if it is about to become mainstream.

In the coming months we'll share with you many innovative examples of products and ideas that you may see or wear in the coming years. Stay tuned! In the meantime watch out for Predator.