Technological T-shirts for Sports Players

Friday 11th of July 2008 07:32:31 AM

Technological T-shirts for Sports Players

Sports players looking for the latest and greatest in fashion and technology just may have some good news. It seems that researchers claim to have developed a new T-Shirt which is able to measure the player’s muscular activity during a game. This is said to help the player to understand better ways to use his or her strength.

According to the researchers, the prototype cloth contains small sensors. These sensors will measure the electrical activity of contracting muscle tissue. In fact, it will even allow a computer to show exactly which muscles are being used during a particular movement.

According to team leader Torsten Linz of Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration in Berlin, "The sensor can even measure the (muscles') electric field through another T-shirt -- it's very unobtrusive." Torsten was quoted by 'New Scientist'.

In fact, the shirt has 12 millimetre wide sensors made from silver-coated thread printed onto it in the same way a normal plastic logo would be attached. The electrical field that is generated by the player’s muscles will create a small build-up of charge in the disc-shaped sensor and the attached wires. Then a small circuit board amplifies the signal, and sends it wirelessly to a computer for analysis. In order to improve sensitivity, the sensors are shielded from external interference like radio signals.

Linz has stated that previous attempts to map the pattern of muscle activity required electrodes to be stuck to the skin. This made natural performance and technique very difficult. The new material does not prohibit or limit muscle activity. A prototype of the T-shirt was tested on hockey players during training. "By seeing exactly how different muscles were active when taking shots, the players were able to improve their technique. In the future the device could even prevent injury during training, by detecting when a muscle is working too hard, “he said.