There was a time when our clothes and accessories were just that – they served little function aside from style. Thanks to a little phenomenon known as The Internet of Things, that is no longer the case. Everything around us is connected; everything from our appliances to our eating utensils right down to our clothing is getting ‘smarter.’ We’re now in the weird world of wearable tech, and with each month that passes, new unusual wearable tech products are arriving on the market.
This world of wearable tech has produced some incredibly unusual inventions. While many of them are undeniably useful, fascinating, and downright cool, others are…a little more bewildering – as in, one wonders how they ever got made at all. Today, we’re going to take a close look at the weird world of wearable tech. Here are some of the most mind-boggling, bizarre, and absurd gadgets you can put on your person.
Nestle’s Tweeting Bra Raises Breast Cancer Awareness in 140 Characters
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One in eight women will develop breast cancer during their lifetime. How devastating and deadly the disease ends up being can directly correlate with how early it’s discovered. In many cases, early detection can end up saving a woman’s life, if not her chest. For that reason, it’s extremely important that one remembers to examine oneself for any irregularities, in addition to paying regular visits to a registered physician. Unfortunately, a lot of women end up forgetting about the first one – meaning they’re opening themselves up to a rather deadly risk.
Nestle thinks it has the answer, in the form of the Tweeting Bra . How it works is simple: whenever it’s unhooked, it sends a tweet; something along the lines of “Maria has just unhooked her bra. When you do the same, don’t forget about your self-exam.” That’s…interesting, right?
The Hovding Cycling Airbag Might Make Bike Helmets Obsolete
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Depending where in the world one lives, being a cyclist can be a rather dangerous prospect. The problem is that if you wipe out, there’s nothing between you and the ground. With Hovding, that’s no longer the case. It’s a wearable airbag that springs to life to protect the wearer’s head, neck, and shoulders in the event of an accident – it’s often more effective than a traditional helmet in the case of the former. The device contains internal sensors which detect a crash based on data gathered from thousands of simulated cycling accidents. It’s equipped with an external shell that allows the wearer to change its appearance, and it’s designed so as not to restrict one’s movement.
Hovding Cycling Airbag Helmet | Gallery
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Ringly Ensures You’ll Never Miss Another Call
View in gallery We’ve covered Ringly before on The Coolist, so we’ll keep this one brief: it’s a ‘smart ring’ which connects up to your phone and notifies you whenever you have a phone call or text message. To be honest, it’s probably one of the less-unusual items on the list; a lot of women tend to stash their phone in their purse, where they might not always hear it ring or vibrate. Ringly directly addresses that problem: whenever a message is received or an alarm goes off, the ring can be configured to flash, change color, vibrate, or all of the above. The only question is whether or not it’s worth the purchase – after all, most calls aren’t so urgent that they need to be taken the second they arrive.
Ringly Smart Ring | Gallery
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The Ritot Watch Tells Time on the Back Of Your Hand
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Ritot is a new piece of technology known as a projection watch. Resembling a simple sports bracelet, a simple tap or shake of one’s hand will cause the device’s internal pico projector to spring to life, projecting the time onto the back of the wearer’s hand. It can also be synced with a smartphone to display details such as text messages, caller ID, weather alerts, social media alerts, and emails. Definitely more on the ‘cool but unusual’ side of things than the ‘head-scratchingly bizarre.’
Ritot Projection Watch | Gallery
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Diffus Is A Dress That Informs Its Wearer of Harmful Pollutants
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Pollution is a major problem in many urban centers, to the point that there are some cities which seem bathed in perpetual smog. Understandably, this is an extreme health risk – pollution has been linked to a great many health problems, up to and including cancer. The Diffus Climate Dress might be the first step towards avoiding locales in which there exists severe pollution. The dress contains sensors which measure the Carbon Dioxide concentration in the air. Depending on how much CO2 there is, it’ll activate LEDS woven into the fabric, creating a light show that ranges from slow to hectic and chaotic. Far more than a tool for detecting unsafe air conditions, Diffus could be the first of a new line of ‘smart textiles.’
Diffus Climate Dress | Gallery
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Stealth Wear Blocks Security Cameras and Mobile Tracking
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It’s been said that we’re living in an age of constant surveillance – that most of us are watched in one way or another during our every waking hour. Whether or not that’s true, this culture of paranoia has led to the invention of a new line of clothing known as Stealth Wear . Purported as a fashion that explores the “aesthetics of privacy,” Stealth Wear is designed out of reflective material which makes the wearer effectively invisible to surveillance drones. The clothing line also contains something known as an “off pocket,” which allows the user to instantly cut off their cell phone’s signal.
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Unsurprisingly, the product has a rather sobering tagline connected with it: “In the digital realm, we are naked all the time.”
x.pose 3D printed dress | Gallery
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With Like-A-Hug, Your Friends Will Hug You Whenever They “Like” Something On Facebook
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Although social media has certainly brought us closer together, it’s also somewhat isolating. An online discussion is nowhere near as good as the real thing, and a ‘like’ rings hollow compared to genuine congratulations. Apparently, MIT thought this a problem worth addressing. In the process of exploring shape display, a team of researchers from the institution crafted the experimental “ Like-A-Hug vest .” It’s essentially exactly as it sounds – whenever the wearer receives a “like” on Facebook, the vest constricts to emulate a hug.
The Daredroid Wearable Robot Makes A Mean Cocktail – If You’re Willing To Play A Game First
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Daredroid may well be one of the most unusual items on the list – a dress which combines medical technology, customized, robotic hardware, and a human host into one piece of clothing. The purpose? To provide people “with a cocktail in exchange for a game of truth or dare.” The dress is designed to respond to proximity – if anyone gets too close, the robot will simply shut down and refuse to dispense a drink. If the user remains outside of the wearer’s personal bubble, it’ll dispense juice, which will then be transformed into a cocktail depending on whether or not the user plays a touchscreen-based game of Truth or Dare.
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Slowly but surely, we’re being transformed into cyborgs. Thanks to the prevalence of the Internet of Things, everything around us is getting smarter – and that includes our clothing. Today, we’ve got a combination of the useful and the downright bizarre – but who knows what the future holds? There’s only one certainty here: before much longer, our clothes are going to be far more than just fashion.
If you enjoy this stuff as much as we do, check out a few of our other articles on future living:
- Seven Futuristic Cities That Could Define the World of Tomorrow
- Dreamcar 2020: Turning 10 Trends in Design into the Car of The Future
- 8 Humanoid Robots with Cool (and Creepy) Human Qualities
- Future Gaming Technology : 7 Systems Revolutionizing How We Play
- 7 Strange 3D Printed Objects from Organs to Bikinis
- Future Watches : 10 Examples of Engineering Magnificence
Strange 3D Printed Objects – It’s not inaccurate to refer to 3D printing as a sort of new age industrial revolution. Never before have we been equipped with such a capacity to create; never before has the manufacturing process been so decentralized as it is today. The 3D printer could well be a revolutionary invention, and if the technology is further developed, it might well put many industries out of business. But that’s for the future.
As you all well know, whenever some new technology surfaces that allows people to create, there’s invariably going to be a group that uses it for…less than orthodox purposes. 3D printing is no exception. Even though the technology is still in its infancy, people have already used 3D printers to create some weird stuff, from mugshots printed using DNA to sculptures of unborn fetuses. Today, we’re going to look at some of the strange 3D printed objects from around the connected world.
Foodini Lets You Print Food
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This 3D printer uses nutritious ingredients to print food while you wait. The Foodini is a 3D printer by Natural Machines that creates a variety of meals at your direction. How it works is actually pretty simple: you select any of a number of pre-prepared, fresh ingredients, then load them into the printer. Once you’ve selected the meal you want to prepare, it’ll arrange everything for you with absolutely no fuss. In short, you’ll be able to make restaurant-quality meals (or at least meals that look like they’re restaurant quality) with little to no effort. Sweet, right?
The N12 Is The World’s First 3D Printed Bikini
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Say hello to the N12, the first article of clothing in the world created entirely with a 3D printer. From what the creators have said on their site, they hope that this will be the first of many products like it. The design itself is actually quite impressive, displaying an intricacy rarely seen in clothing. Plus – and I’d imagine this is the most important part – it’s apparently quite a comfortable wear, as well. Affordable, too. You can buy one yourself (along with a small selection of other strange 3D printed objects and accessories) here .
Me, I’m excited for when they start printing shirts pants. I feel like the ability to make one’s own clothes might throw a spanner in the works for the clothing industry, no?
MakerLove Makes 3D Printing A Little More…Intimate
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There are strange 3D printed objects, and then there’s this. MakerLove is a website that exists on the principle that people will choose to make certain items they might only wish to do privately. The site provides a wide variety of sex toys which can be printed with a 3D printer. Particularly enterprising users can even submit their own designs to a design contest on the site. Like a… Sigmund Freud shaped sex toy? I guess somebody out there thought it’d be a good idea.
The Minibuilders Are Crafting Entire Buildings
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In the future, there may no longer be construction crews. At least not as we know them today, anyway. That’s because – assuming researchers at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia get their way – cities of the future will be constructed by a team of robots called Minibuilders , which will craft them from the ground-up. This robotic swarm will be able to construct buildings of any size, with a level of efficiency human construction teams can only dream of. Even better, they suffer from none of the pitfalls commonly associated with 3D printing (such as having to build a printer large enough to accommodate the entire structure; a problem they ran into in China). What this basically means is that we’ll be able to erect cities almost as quickly as we can design them.
Modern Meadow Replaces Meat With…Something Else
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There’s more to 3D printed food than what we can prepare at home. Modern Meadow is a startup funded by billionaire investor Peter Thiel, and it deals in a very peculiar product: 3D printed meat and leather. It bills this ‘bioprinted meat’ as an environmentally friendly means of enjoying animal protein; one which cuts out a big chunk of the process involved in meat and leather production. According to Modern Meadow co-founder Andras Forgacs, the process by which we currently prepare our meat is a horrendously wasteful one, and “an environmental train wreck.” They hope that their synthetic meat-printing process – which has already managed to build three-dimensional tissues and organ structures – can cut down on the excess waste, and save a few lives in the process.
Print Your Own Flesh And Blood With Organovo
Organovo follows a similar principle to Modern Meadow. The difference is that while the latter uses the technology to create environmentally-conscientious hamburger alternatives, Organovo is creating full-fledged human body parts. Yes, you read that right – this organization is basically printing living human tissue. Currently, the technology can produce tissues of about twenty or so cell layers thick, comprised of multiple cell types. Already, they’ve created a functioning human liver; there’s no telling what else might come of this technology. Pretty soon, we might even be able to replace lost limbs and organs.
The Smartboard Takes Surfing To A Whole New Level
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One of the best things about 3D printing is that it allows a nearly unprecedented level of freedom when it comes to designing a product. The user can literally make something exactly the way they want it with absolutely no fuss. The Smartboard is indicative of this trend. It’s basically a surfboard, printed from the ground up for an individual surfer. Every single aspect of the board is customizable, from the stiffness to the size to the shape. It is quite literally an extension of the surfer who uses it – and that’s exactly as it should be. Now we’ve just gotta wait for all the other 3D printed products that are bound to follow – I don’t doubt there’ll be some good ones, for sure.
Strange 3D Printed Objects | Gallery
