Japanese smart clothing uses nanofibers to monitor your heart-rate

On December 17, 2014, Shanghai Huahong Integrated Circuit Co. Ltd. (referred to as SHHIC) successfully won the bid for the purchase project of RFID composite passing cards for 2014-2015 highway network toll collection of Guangdong Transportation Group.

The bid-winning products are SHC1126-GS01 double-frequency composite passing cards developed independently by SHHIC and mainly used for storing data of vehicles except trucks and routing information of vehicles driving in the highway network. The card is embedded with two modules, namely a 433MHZ active electronic tag for recording the driving path identification information and a contactless intelligent card for recording charging operation data at entrances and exits as well as vehicle license information. Upon being put into service, the card has properly resolved the problems of toll collection and distribution of ambiguous paths in the highway network, which has great significance in improving the highway management ability in Guangdong province.

The bid-winning project of Guangdong highway has laid a good foundation for SHHIC to promote the intelligent traffic product business and broaden the composite passing card product market, making an important preparation for further development of transportation information and intelligence, and strengthening SHHIC' s determination to intensify the efforts for building "intelligent cities".

Japanese mobile carrier NTT Docomo and materials developer Toray have been working on joint projects for a while and now they're publicly announcing one. Welcome Hitoe (Japanese for "one layer"), cloth that contains Toray's nanofibers that are coated in a transmittable layer. It's not the orange cloth (that's just standard material), but the nicotine-patch sized square you attach to it that does the sensing.

 
Place two of these on you and they'll act as electrodes, measuring your heartbeat and even offering metrics resembling a cardiogram. The plan is to connect this cleanly non-invasive health monitor to NTT Docomo's health app platform that's already on its smartphones, developing practical... soft... hardware for sale alongside it. The pitch didn't just include sports clothing, however, with pajamas and other sleepwear planned for launch. Look! There's even a little hat! The sensors will apparently survive tumbles in the washing machine and, having seen an earlier prototype late last year, we can confirm that the patches are suitably lightweight and flexible -- now the work is down to reducing that lumpy hub sensor that we also spotted. Wearable gadgets might finally be going subtle. There's a quick video from our allies at Engadget Japanese after the break.