The heart-tracking clothes are the work of OMsignal, a start up company founded by Waterloo, Ontario, Canada’s Stephane Marceau. Marceau says the goal was to make clothing capable of making life easier.
“We need something that complements life, without getting in the way of life,” said Marceau, who is also OMsignal’s chief executive officer. “Clothing was, naturally, the most friction less fit.”
OMsignal’s shirts look and feel like your typical workout apparel. What sets the OMsignal shirt apart is a special, conductive silver band that wraps around the wearer’s chest. This band is capable of sending information to a tiny piece of hardware which snaps onto the shirt. Users can then wirelessly sync that device, which has been described as a “little black box”, with a Bluetooth-enabled smartphone. From there, a user can track their heart rate.
But that’s not all — OMsignal says its shirts can also be used to track energy reserves and make suggestions on how to manage your health. “At OMsignal we’ve focused on giving consumers quality insights on performance, taking the research a step further to guide users to their peak performance,” Marceau said.
The shirts are currently available for pre-order and cost about $200. It’s expected OMsignal’s shirts will begin shipping to U.S. and international customers sometime this summer.
