This ‘E-Skin’ smart shirt turns your torso into a video game motion controller

This ‘E-Skin’ smart shirt turns your torso into a video game motion controller

Japanese startup Xenoma may have just cracked the secret to making successful smart clothing, and it involves a ludicrous skin-tight Spider-Man-style shirt, 14 sensors, and a running mini-game that’s as goofy as it is fun. The company’s “E-Skin” technology, which it debuted at last year’s CES, basically turns your torso into a motion controller, so your body movements act as software inputs for games and other motion-based apps. It uses a Bluetooth module that plugs into the center of your chest to transmit the data from the sensors to a nearby PC or smartphone running Xenoma’s custom software.

This year at CES, Xenoma is back with its signature smart shirt that’s more refined than its previous model, in addition to two new prototype products in the fitness and health care realms. It being both silly and wildly fun makes Xenoma’s E-Skin product more fascinating than any piece of smart clothing I’ve seen before, and far more useful than, say, Google’s Project Jacquard jean jacket.

For one, the mini-game, even though it was very basic and very much a proof-of-concept, didn’t have to blow me away with realistic graphics, a virtual reality component, or some other showy conference gimmick. It was about as sophisticated as a mobile game, and yet the E-Skin input mechanism made the experience of playing it as fun as a round of Dance Dance Revolution.

Even if I was embarrassing myself in front of scores of Las Vegas CES attendees — one of whom happened to photograph me for The Associated Press, much to my dismay — the tech felt immediately useful. The fitness element is abundantly clear, but Xenoma imagines future smart shirts that will track how you run, or monitor your vitals via EKG sensors and track your respiratory system by analyzing the contractions of your chest. Those are the functions it says its two prototype products are designed to tackle, but those products are a ways away from becoming a reality.

As an optional add-on, the company is also looking into letting developers pair its E-Skin products with VR headsets. That would give Samsung Gear VR, Google Daydream, and other smartphone-powered units a full-body motion controller without the use of external cameras or more expensive, inside-out motion tracking modules.

Right now, however, you can only get your hands on Xenoma’s general-purpose E-Skin product only if you plunk down $5,000 for access to a developer kit, due out starting in March, with the purpose of designing apps for the company’s gaming and fitness platform. (A successful Kickstarter campaign last year sold the shirt for as little as $499.) Xenoma is planning on launching an official consumer version sometime later this year.

But if my brief time with this E-Skin shirt, I can say that the smart clothes market has a bright future ahead of it, so long as companies like Xenoma can figure out how to turn these prototype shirts and clunky gaming demos into finished products.

image Source:-http://www.startlr.com/e-skin-or-smart-shirt-8-photos-video/
Source:-https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/8/16861860/xenoma-e-skin-smart-shirt-video-game-motion-controller-ces-2018