The "E39" Under Armour shirt is poised to be the first of many future electronic monitoring athletic gear. The athlete wears the shirt and it monitors heart and breathing rate, skin temperature, force, and direction. Onboard the shirt's "BUG" sensor is a processor, triaxial accelerometer, and 2GB of storage. Zephyr, the company that designed the monitoring system, puts together biometric reports that the user can access with a cell phone, laptop, tablet, etc. The goal is to allow the players and coaches to see what is going on that is not directly observable and get insight into how to improve. Under Armour hopes the see improvements to the system and perhaps real time information. Otherwise, how do you time what task the athlete performed with the data in the shirt? Again, it is the first of many similar devices.
VP of Under Armour Keven Haley has this to say, "The application is limitless. We’re measuring explosiveness today, but down the road, when you start thinking about soccer, lacrosse, things like that — obviously, the longer you go on, the more breathing rate becomes an issue... The guys who are training with it are just enthralled with the ability to turn just around and look at how many G-forces they’ve generated."
Eavesdropper
pic : Julio Jones via Under Armour