Wearable Electronics

One of the more popular exhibits at Tokyo Make Meeting this past weekend was Mommy Tummy, a pregnancy experience simulation system developed by Kosaka Laboratory of Kanazawa Technical College. It allows men (and others who have never carried a child) to not just feel what it's like to be pregnant, but to also gradually experience the changes. The Mommy Tummy suit is pumped full of water, and the onscreen display updates you as to how far along your pregnancy has progressed. The man's breasts will get bigger as well – did I just write that? – via a pair of inflatable balloons on the front. Read More

At first glance this looks like any other ordinary watch on the market, but on closer inspection you find a clever design that stores data via a MicroSD memory card hidden in the strap. The Card Reader Watch has a stainless steel bezel, back cover, and buckle along with a flat USB adapter so that you can connect it straight to a computer to get at your well traveled data. Read More

Abraham-Louis Perrelet began working on an automatic watch winding mechanism in 1770 (the year Captain Cook “discovered” Australia). By 1777, he’d perfected the invention and founded the House of Perrelet watches the same year. His success in harvesting energy from the wearer led to his next invention, the pedometer, and he subsequently went on to manufacture a range of firsts in the watch industry. Innovation still underpins the company, and Perrelet patented its Double Rotor (one on the dial side, one on the movement side) in 1995. Now it has put them on show with its TURBINE XL watch, enabling caffeine-addicted, ADHD-suffering freaks (guilty) to amuse themselves for hours. Don’t believe me? See inside. Read More

With capacitive the technology of choice on the majority of touchscreen devices hitting the market, people have been coming up with all kinds of interesting ways to interact with their devices when the winter chill sets in and gloves become a necessity. Many South Koreans apparently turned to using sausages as a stylus but if you’d prefer not to be hassled by dogs as you type a text there are less meat product-based solutions, such as the North Face Etip gloves. Now there’s another glove-based solution in the form of Agloves, which provide even greater touchscreen friendly surface area for your hands. Read More

At a major sporting event I attended recently, it proved impossible to get a connection on a mobile network that was swamped as many of the 100,000 strong crowd attempted to contact friends and family. While the influx of calls was the result of a thrilling draw, it highlighted the weakness of overloaded communications networks that would struggle in the event of a disaster in a heavily populated area. A new system being developed by researchers at Queen’s University Belfast could turn this weakness into a strength by allowing members of the public carrying wearable sensors to form the backbone of new mobile Internet networks. Read More

As crazy as most of Tokyo Flash's watches are, the company just might have set a new standard with the a new psychedelic design, appropriately dubbed the Kisai Wasted. With a hypnotic multi-colored array of LED lights on the face, this latest watch is sure to be a hit (no pun intended) with the stoner demographic. Read More

We've covered a number of amazing exoskeletons here on Gizmag, ranging from the solutions for paraplegics – see REX Bionics' and Berkley Bionics' exoskeletons – to the downright wacky Kid Walker mecha for children. Last year we saw Activelink's Power Loader, an exoskeleton that takes its name from the suit of the same name in James Cameron's Aliens. The company, a subsidiary of Panasonic, has now come out with a lightweight version, appropriately named the Power Loader Light. Read More

A coming together of sports lens developer Zeal Optics and display innovator Recon Instruments has managed to successfully squeeze both GPS technology and head-mounted display into a set of ski goggles named Transcend. A tiny computer gathers information from a number of onboard sensors and provides location, speed, altitude and temperature information to the wearer via a micro-LCD display inside the goggles. The image from the display is then virtually projected so that it appears out in front of the user. Read More

Looxcie (pronounced "look-see," get it?) is a small, lightweight, always-on, Bluetooth-enabled camcorder that links up with a smartphone app to offer users easy upload to social networking video sites. Slip it over the ear and switch on to begin documenting your life. When it's not recording everything in front of you, it can be used to take calls with a talk-time said to be around ten hours. Read More