CuteCircuit, an Interaction Design and Wearable Technology company has got wide media coverage end of last year with the nomination of the Hug Shirt as one of the innovations of the year by Time Magazine.What looked at first as a concept study back in 2004 on Wearable Electronics turned out to hit the sweet spot in the consumer base.
How does it work?
When touching the red areas on your Hug Shirt your mobile phone receives the sensors data via Bluetooth (hug pressure, skin temperature, heartbeat rate, time you are hugging for, etc) and then delivers it to the other person which wears a Hug Shirt as well.
Requests from many different companies to buy such Hug Shirts leaded CuteCircuit to the plan to look for production and commercialization of the Hug Shirt.
Is it not great to send your loved ones a gentle hug from the distance when you are far and away from them? How about such shirt for your mother to give her a hug not just on mothers day?
The military sees the usefulness in the Hug Shirt by allowing their soldiers to exchange hugs with their loved ones far away at home. This can help to improve the moral of the troops. Great idea, enabled by the fantastic concept and design of the Hugh Shirt.
Don’t worry that anyone can send you hugs, The Hug shirts don’t have any assigned phone number, all the data goes from the sensors Bluetooth to your mobile phone and your mobile phone delivers the hug data to your friend’s phone which is then transmitted via his/her Bluetooth enable phone to his or her shirt! So you both need such a shirt to exchange hugs.
A fantastic concept and we hope that in time for next years mothers day the Hug Shirt will be on the shelves to be picked up for our mothers and loved ones.
Check out this video on current.tv – it shows how the Hug Shirt works and give insight of the design ideas behind it from the creators Francesca Rosella and Ryan Genz.
