Every now and then I just need a hug. Especially after a long day of work. With this in mind I’m reminded of one of my best friends. He works at a law firm, you know, like “the firm” type law firm. Every time I talk to him I make some comment like, “if only I could jump across the phone lines and give you a hug, I would…” Its heartbreaking to call him at 1am only to hear that he’s still at the office, sleeping under his desk.
Well, all I have to say is, welcome to the 21st century! CuteCircuit is a company to watch– they take cutting edge techonology and fuse it with great fashion design. The result are awesome concepts like the KineticDress, which changes color and pattern depending on the activity of the wearer, the Mystique Dress, which changes shape and color depending on the time of the day increasing in length from morning to night… and my personal favorite, the Hug Shirt:
The Hug Shirt is a Bluetooth accessory for Java enabled mobile phones. 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 and it is seamlessly transmitted Bluetooth to his or her shirt!
Sending hugs is as easy as sending an SMS and you will be able to send hugs while you are on the move, in the same way and to the same places you are able to make phone calls (Rome to Tokyo, New York to Paris).
The system is very simple: a Hug Shirt (Bluetooth with sensors and actuators), a Bluetooth java enabled mobile phone with the Hug Me java software running (it understands what the sensors are communicating), and on the other side another phone and another shirt. If you do not have a Hug Shirt but know that your friend has one you can still send them a hug creating it with the HugMe software and it will be delivered to your friend’s Hug Shirt!
The Hug Shirt can be washed. The smart technology pads (containing sensors and actuators), placed under each red area that you see in the picture, can be removed for washing and placed back in afterwards. The Hug pads are plug and play, so that you don’t need to be an expert to place them and make it work! The Hug Shirts are available in many colors, so that you can move the smart pads from shirt to shirt and remain fashionable.
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.
Cute Circuit is clearly on the cutting edge of both science and style.
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