The World's First Smart Bra?

That's what they're claiming: Meet the world's first smart bra

A San Francisco company hopes women will ditch the Fitbit or Apple Watch and forget about having to use an accessory to measure heart rate and steps.

The OMbra, the worlds's first "smart" bra, introduced here at the Consumer Electronics Showby OMsignal, aims to measure your biometrics through a piece of clothing already worn daily.

"Women gravitate towards wearables, but they don't want an item they have to put on or worry about every day," says OMsignal chief marketing officer Shaz Khang. And "if they're going to be wearing it all day, they want to get more information."

The bra is expected to start shipping in spring, for around $150.

But if my research is right, this is far from the first "smart bra" that has been promoted for example this was promoted back in 2011. : Smart Bra Detects Cancer Long Before Tumors Are Noticeable.

Random bra picture to "illustrate point"

Nevada-based First Warning Systems has created a bra that uses sensor technology to detect subtle temperature changes that take place as blood vessels grow and feed tumors.

The data collected is fed into pattern recognition software, which can help identify possibly tumors long before they're big enough to appear on a mammogram.

The bra has undergone three clinical trials with over 600 participants, and is ready to go to market in Europe starting in 2013. With FDA approval, it may be available in the US as early as 2014.

It seems to me, a bra that spots cancer is a lot smarter than a bra that tells your heart rate. But then, it doesn't seem to have materialized either. And back in 2013 Bill Gates Microsoft was promoting one: Microsoft develops ‘smart’ bra to stop women comfort eating

Another random bra picture

Microsoft has offered a bizarre take on wearable technology with a controversial new ‘smart’ bra for women. Researchers for the software giant claim the undergarment will stop women comfort eating when stressed.

The hi-tech bra measures the wearer’s heart rate and breathing and alerts them when their stress levels are rising by sending a Bluetooth alert to their smartphone.

Senior Microsoft researcher Mary Czerwinski hopes the bra will make women think twice before opening the fridge. ‘It’s mostly women who are emotional overeaters and it turns out a bra is perfect for measuring the heart,’ she told Discovery News.

But what happens when it goes blue-screen? Anyway, that hasn't become a runaway best seller that I'm aware of..

‘We tried to do the same thing for men’s underwear but it was too far away.’ 

Why would a man want underwear that nags him about eating comfort food?

I suspect you get the picture

And of course, who can forget the Japanese smart bra that only unhooks for "true love". It's hard to date the article (deliberately, I suspect) but since it references the Microsoft one, I suspect it's from 2014

Whoever doubted the magic of true love? In the age of wearable technology, true love unlocks a high-tech bra. Japanese lingerie maker Ravijour, in celebration of its tenth year anniversary, has released a smart bra called True Love Tester that can only be unhooked if the user is truly in love.

And how does this version of the smart bra determine whether or not the user has experienced "true love"?

The smart bra comes with sensors that feeds the heart rate of the wearer to a smartphone application via Bluetooth. The mobile application analyzes the heart rate and determines whether it will unhook the bra or not. "When excited, the adrenal medulla secretes catecholomine, which affects the autonomic nerve, and stimulates the heart rate," explained a doctor in the instructional video about the product.

Why, using the same kind of sensors that "new" smart bra uses, heart rate. So why settle for the  San Francisco version that merely reports your heart rate, when you could have the Japanese version that will tell you if he's right for you too?

 

But what if she doesn't want true love?

Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Teenage Wasteland" ready at The Other McCain.