Increased mobility and the demands of work force many of us to spend more time from the people we care about, and the chill winds of recession may be blowing but that doesn’t mean we can’t share the love and spread a little warmth by sending a hug as easily as a text message.
CuteCircuit, based in Shoreditch, East London, have came up with the Hug Shirt, which allows a hug to be sent, or received, using mobile phone technology of any bandwidth, no matter how far apart you happen to be.
The innovation was showcased last month at the Mobile World Congress trade show, staged in Barcelona, at which CuteCircuit was one of a handful of companies picked to represent British technology.
Speaking at the Spanish event, UK Trade and Minister Mervyn Davies urged people to use the Hug Shirt to send an embrace to politicians, who, apparently, need it more than the rest of us!
The commercial launch isn’t due until later in the year, so there were no costs available at the time we went to press (what price on a hug anyway?). But this new form of human to human interaction is already generating strong interest, and the Hug Shirt has also already appeared at the Wired Next Fest in New York, and Time magazine has hailed it as one of the top new inventions.
The technology of the Hug Shirt is as simple as the idea behind it.
- The long-sleeved T-shirt has red areas containing sensor and actuators in removable smart pads.
- Java enabled mobile phone technology allows ‘hug data’ to travel from the sensors’ Bluetooth to your phone.
- Your mobile then transmits the information to your recipient’s phone, which, in turn, sends it, and the ‘hug’, to their shirt.
The basic premise is that sensors can measure the strength of touch, skin warmth and heart¬beat of one shirt wearer and send the physical sensation of a hug to actuators in the shirt the second wearer.
Even if you don’t own a shirt, but know that your friend/partner does, you can still create a hug using the software, and get it delivered.
The washable shirts come in various colours, are lead-free and non-toxic, and operate using rechargeable batteries.
“Combining emotion and technology should be part of every design process,” is how CuteCircuit puts it. Indeed. Not entirely sure the Hug Shirt can beat the real thing though!
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