Computerized Fabric Could Transform Any Piece of Clothing Into a Fitness Tracker

The silicone-textile hybrid sensors are highly flexible and resilient, making them excellent

candidates for sensing body movement. Credit: Wyss Institute/Harvard University Counting your steps used to be an activity restricted to OCD sufferers, but with the advent of smart phones and fitness trackers, it's easy to keep track of precisely how many strides you take in a week, or a day, or an hour. New technology out of Harvard promises to make this kind of tracking even more accurate and ubiquitous. A team of researchers at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have developed a stretchy fabric-based sensor that can detect and transmit data on a wide range of human movement. The highly sensitive capacitor technology could be incorporated into the next generation of smart apparel, in which your clothing doubles as a digital device. Put another way: Your shirt could be your next computer.