When two Heart Sync player’s hearts have completely synchronized, the hoods swirl white and the game is won.

Two major conferences were held last week in the U.S. to discuss the future of wearable technology, the Wear Tech Con in San Francisco and Wearable Tech Expo in New York City.  Here are some of the technologies they talked about. (Photos)

 

 

The future is all about leading a stress-free life and having all the solutions for all problems at hand. Literally. For example, if you wear Lark Pro’s vibrating alarm bracelet, you can slip out of bed quietly without waking your partner. It’s also designed to help insomniacs improve their sleeping patterns, by picking the optimal time in a sleep cycle to wake a user up.

The dress that turns transparent when the wearer is aroused. Would you try it? Dutch design collective Studio Roosegaarde have developed a sensual dress called Intimacy 2.0 together with designer Anouk Wipprecht. Made of leather and smart e-foils, it ‘explores the relationship between technology and intimacy’. The high-tech panels are stimulated by the heartbeat of the wearer. Initially opaque or white, they become increasingly transparent when exposed to an electric current — in this case a beating heart.

We might shout less at one another in the future, as it looks like we’ll be wearing our hearts on our sleeves. Another garment that displays your emotions to the world is the GER Mood Sweater, by design lab Sensoree. Based on the technology of a classic lie detector test, it interprets emotions and displays mood instantly as an interactive light display. Blue means relaxed and red is nervous or angry.

Rather than bringing dirt into your house, these shoes will clean it up. Looking like something out of Star Wars, the FOKI vacuum shoes are a concept from Indonesian product designer Adika Titut Triyugo. They are equipped with a pair of rotary cleaners on the sole of each shoe and a LED display on top that indicates battery life and cleaning progress. So be a trooper and go vacuum.

t’s a love/hate thing. The cycling helmet can save your life, but it doesn’t look good and tends to ruin your hair. Thankfully the future offers a solution — the Hövding. A Swedish creation, the Hövding is an “airbag for cyclists”. It’s worn as a collar and only expands into a full helmet if you have an accident.

Don’t like strangers approaching you? Then the Smoke Dress is a must-have. Designed by Anouk Wipprecht, the dress can suddenly visually obliterate itself through the emission of a cloud of smoke. Ambient clouds of smoke are created when the dress detects a visitor approaching, thus camouflaging itself within it’s own materiality. Perfect if you are a fashionable socialite AND a misanthrope.

The future will be bright in all those augmented realities. Google Glass is the wearable computer that responds to voice commands and displays information on a visual display.

Tired of waiting forever at a bar before you finally get your mojito? Tired of over-crowded bars even? Soon, your best cocktail dress will also make the cocktails. The DareDroid dress uses medical technology, customized hardware and mood analysis to provide you with your favorite poison. Designed by Anouk Wipprecht.

Technology opens up new playful ways for people to interact.SENSOREE’s Heart Sync is a heart synchronizing game to find out when our hearts beat as one. The players wear corsets that display their heart rate. When close to one other, each player’s hood senses the other’s pulse and synchronizes to it.

The field of wearable technology is rich with exploration of human emotion — and headwear that would turn Padmé Amidala green with envy. The flirty Blinklifier is a concept by Tricia Flanagan and Katia Vega. It’s fitted with LEDs that respond to specific eye-movement and could take flirting to a new level. Researchers hope the result will give people more visual clues about how their friends are feeling.

One ring to rule them all! Use the NFC Ring, a UK-based Kickstarter project created by John McLear, to unlock doors, share pictures, share social network links, unlock phones and much more. Just fist-bump your phone or tablet or use an open-palm gesture to transfer the information. And it never needs charging. Booya!

Shine bright like a diamond … or be the star at futuristic rave parties. The GalaxyDress by CuteCircuit is embroidered with 24,000 full color LEDs, and is believed to be the largest wearable display in the world. The LEDs are extra-thin, flexible and hand embroidered on a layer of silk. Fabulous darling!

Doing exercise without monitoring yourself be rare in the future of wearable technology. And wearing a giant watch that counts your steps is so 2012. That’s where the Misfit Shine necklace comes in. It’s a physical activity tracker that you can hang around your neck, or put wherever your want. The Shine’s 12 dots represent your daily activity goal.

Glow in the dark with the LumiDress. Made up of ultra-thin optical fibers woven together with other synthetic fiber this dress will light up the night.

This concept dress called Bubelle by Philip’s Design interacts with and predicts the wearer’s emotional state by changing colors. A beautiful white can turn into a relaxed blue. Philip’s dresses are made from high-tech materials and are still in the concept phase.

Skip the perfume and let your body do the … scenting. The Smart Second Skin Dress by Jenny Tillotson is a research project aimed at creating scents for every occasion. The dress allows a user to breathe the scent of his or her choice. It can be to energize, to boost confidence or simply to smell nice.

If flexing your muscles doesn’t impress the object of your affection, then it will at least impress your shirt.Radiate Athletics’ new shirt lets you visually track each individual muscle’s progress in real time and make adjustments to your workout on the fly. Color changes track the progress of your work out, allowing your mirror to become the only personal trainer you need.

In the future, your dress might advise you to skips that romantic walk through the fields. It might tell you that the area’s greenhouse gas levels are too high. Danish design company Diffus has created the Climate Dress. It’s laced with hundreds of small LEDs that will respond to greenhouse gases. They will pulse slowly when the levels are normal and flash rapidly in highly polluted areas.

Thanks to all those gadgets you can attach to your body, there will soon be no excuse not to exercise. And to avoid injuries in the future where everyone will jog to work, Sensoria Socks by Heapsylon have come up with sensor-equipped textile that couples with an activity tracker to identify injury-prone running styles. Then, using a simple app, it coaches the runner to reduce those tendencies.

Via CNN