In one of the more unusual cases of the worlds of fashion and technology colliding, Intel has debuted stress-sensing glasses that can be paired with a belt that doubles up as a projector at Paris Fashion Week.
Following the announcement that the
company was investing several millions with the likes of Amazon in a new controller tracking finger movement, Intel has continued to showcase its commitment to wearable technology with stress-sensing glasses paired to a belt-based projector. During the fashion show, the belt-based device projected live data indicating the model’s stress levels onto walls.
The wearable technology was produced in collaboration with Cypriot-British designer and technology fan Hussein Chalayan, who has previously wowed catwalk audiences with dresses with an embedded screen comprising of 15,000 LEDs and clothes that change shape via microchips and animatronics.
The outfit incorporates glasses running on Intel Curie (providing a low-power ‘brain’ for wearable clothing items like recently introduced Chromat dress and sports bra). The glasses detect the wearer’s stress levels via in-built EEG electrodes which provide biometric data such as brainwave activity. An optical heart rate sensor and microphone also measures a person’s breathing rate. Data is then provided via Bluetooth LE to the belt and an Intel Compute Stick processes the data and sends it to an embedded pico projector (housed within the belt) that presents the information on a wall. According to its makers, the idea behind the technology is to increase awareness and proactive management of stress in real-time.
Sandra Lopez, vice president of the New Technology Group at Intel, commented: “We know stress is a catalyst for many other diseases, so we wanted to help manage that and the mental mindset. Our whole goal with wearables is improving human lives.”
After Paris Fashion Week, the collection will head to London’s Design Museum. Intel says the project with Chalayan is very much a test-run of products from dreamt up at its R & D labs and that it plans to “identify the sensors that are commercially ready and integrate them into other product lines.”