From Clunky To Seamless Motion Capture
Data about our daily lives and movements can be very useful. For example, it could indicate how many calories we burn or help enhance exercise, physiotherapy, and rehabilitation.
However, capturing such data can be very difficult. Currently, most motion capture systems rely on complex systems requiring custom suits like those used for special effects in cinema and video games.
Source: AxisXR
These systems are rather cumbersome and expensive, and they need a complex set of captors to record the movement data.
This might be changing, thanks to the newly published results by researchers from the University of Bristol and University of Bath, in the UK.
SeamSleeves
The researchers have looked at integrating motion captors into everyday clothes. To do so, they stitched conductive threads into the garment seams to create electrical circuits in the clothing itself.
The resistance of these electrical circuits changes with the movement of the clothing, detecting motion in the process. You can see how stretching the fabric gives out an electric signal in the video below.
This design is a major step forward in motion detection, as it removes the need for strange-looking motion capture suits.
It also removes the need for a separate power source. Instead, the electrical seam is paired with a charging coil, that can be powered by a smartphone in the pocket of the cloth.
The integration of the circuit in cloth seams, called by the researchers “Seamsleeves”, allows for smart clothing to be designed and manufactured using normal clothing production methods, which should contribute to reducing costs greatly.
Source: University Of Bristol
Applications
AI-Driven Rehabilitation & Physiotherapy
A key part of rehabilitation therapy after an injury is providing feedback to the patient if he is doing the movements correctly.
Unfortunately, this is a very labor-intensive task, usually requiring the full attention of a skilled therapist for each patient.
With an accurate recording of movement in real-time, we can imagine that an AI-assisted exercise regimen could help patients perform some of the exercises at home. And with immediate feedback on how to do the exercise better.
Meanwhile, the therapist will be able to check the results regularly and remotely.
This would also provide a record of past and present exercises, allowing to monitor progress. In turn, it can allow for a custom program to be designed, with or without human intervention, to address the movements that are not performed correctly.
Cost Reduction
Physiotherapy and rehabilitation therapy are usually extremely expensive and often not properly covered by health insurance.
So while it is probably best when combined with a skilled therapist, an AI-based system could help reduce healthcare costs and make life-changing therapies more accessible, even to patients who are poorly or not covered by medical insurance.
Exercise
A gym outfit that incorporates Seamsleeve could give feedback through any exercise app, similarly to how most smartwatches already do it. Except it would do so with accurate data of movement, instead of approximation from shaking or acceleration.
This could make it the next step in wearable devices, especially if it can be combined with existing ones like smartwatches, which we discussed in our article “Perfect Monitoring: Wearable Health Tracking Companies to Invest In”.
In the long run, such wearables could even be self-charged through solar cells, with the ultra-thin photovoltaic cells potentially integrated into the clothing as well.
This would make Seamsleeve just the movement-focus part of a larger trend of smart clothing and wearable electronics, that are becoming increasingly feasible thanks to new generations of sensors.
For reference, the market for smart clothing is expected to grow to $7.3B by 2030.
Professional Sports
One last niche application for Seamsleeves could be professional sports.
Firstly, coaches could use it to record and monitor the movements of the players and identify any inefficiency or potential improvement to players’ technique and skills.
Secondly, this could be a good extra tool to be made available to referees in addition to video recording, for example in determining if a player’s clothing has been pulled by a member of the other team.
Digital and VR Industry
Seamsleeves could be integrated into motion capture clothing, potentially “normal” looking clothing worn by actors, to later on be used for animation for video games, movies, etc.
This could include gloves, replicating the complex movement of fingers, as the AiQ Synertial motion capture suits are already doing with different types of captors.
Source: AiQ Clothing
Suits for VR gaming replicating the player movement in-game could also be an option, especially if they look “normal”, not adding a strange looking or uncomfortable suit to the VR headsets.
Wearable Companies
Most smart clothing companies like AiQ Smart Clothing or Carre Technologies are still privately owned, limiting the wearables investment horizon to wearable companies, most of them with a focus on smartwatches and other wearables devices.
1. Koninklijke Philips N.V.
Philips is a well-known small electronics consumer brand (shavers, electric toothbrushes), equally active in healthcare. It was the #1 for MedTech patent filing in Europe for 2022.
It is active in connected medical products, from wearables to imaging, respirators, or medical robots. The company is also active in semiconductors (including maglev technology) and high-tech/robotics/automation.
Source: Philips
Philips’ wearables offer covers cardiac, respiratory, and activity metrics. Its sensors can be integrated into smartwatches, health monitors, medical patches, and activity trackers.
Regarding wearables, Philips favors a partnership solution, where it develops for third parties “their” connected IoT (Internet of Things) medical devices fully compatible with the rest of Philips’ solutions.
In that context, it offers its clients prototyping, regulatory advising, end-to-end product development, and industrial-scale production.
As rehabilitation and physiotherapy are likely the prime market for Seamsleeve, it would make sense to see a company as involved in healthcare as Philips be among the first to offer this concept commercially.
The company wants to create a fully integrated digital healthcare environment, where sensors match devices, and then use multiple connectivity solutions to integrate into the Philips HealthSuite Cloud solution and allow for in-depth data analytics.
Source: Philips
Being often a MedTech industry supplier, Philips is not as visible in the wearable sector as other more prominent companies. It is nevertheless an expert in building high-performance electronic devices and sensors, often pushing forward what’s possible in its niche in healthcare and wearables.
With wearables increasingly integrated into healthcare and part of medical protocols, we can expect the Healthcare segment of Philips to be a growing part of the conglomerate.
2. Garmin Ltd.
Garmin is a leader in outdoor electronics, with an initial offering of GPS and navigation tools (automobile, marine, and planes), now expanded to fitness and health monitoring.
Fitness represents 23% of the company’s revenues and 10% of its operating income, mostly driven by smartwatches, with another significant portion of revenues coming from the outdoor segment.
Source: Garmin
It has shipped 16 million devices in 2023, for a total of $5.2B in revenues.
Garmin offers a full ecosystem of health data for researchers, helping fields as different as research about sleep, depression, cancer treatments, women’s health, or even drowsy driving.
Garmin might not be a tech giant, but it is razor-focused on the outdoor & fitness target, which is half of its income besides navigation. This sector is also the main growth area for the company, with the segment most likely to become the main revenue source in the future.
The reputation of Garmin for sturdy, high-quality, and useful outdoor products converts well into the fitness and health segment.
Interestingly, it leads in the premium segment, with the greatest market share in the >$500 price range, beating Apple here despite it usually dominating the high-price segment of its markets of smartphones, computers, and tablets.
Source: Garmin
So Garmin might be confined to the niche market of fitness and sports “fanatics,” ready to pay more for the highest quality and a dedicated brand. This, nevertheless, can be a very profitable activity and might help investing in Garmin to pay off for its shareholders.
Its positioning would be ideal to match high-quality, sport-monitoring smart clothing able to pair with Garmin’s smartwatches and deliver customized exercise monitoring and advice.