What’s a Bra Got to do With IT?

I had heard about a wearable female piece of clothing that would possibly promote breast cancer awareness, but what I later stumbled upon; inspired by this same female piece of clothing, I wasn’t particularly ready for.

We all know Microsoft has been steadily expanding into the realm of hardware in recent years with the Surface, the Nokia handset deal and the Xbox One. So imagine my shock when I got wind of the fact that the tech giant is taking its first tentative steps into the world of lingerie with, get ready for it… a smart bra. Yes. [quote_box_right]The bra feels what you’re feeling and warns that you do not need to ‘eat’ your sorrows (or excitement) away by sending a notification to your smartphone![/quote_box_right]

From my findings, the smart bra was revealed in a new paper from a team of five scientists at Microsoft Research, titled “Food and Mood: Just-in-Time Support for Emotional Eating.” The idea is to measure your emotional state via sensors built into the bra, cross reference that with your feelings when overeating in the past, and send a warning to your smartphone if the system thinks you’re likely to reach for the jar of cookies at any minute.

“This is the ﬁrst study, that we are aware of, that makes use of wearable, mobile sensors for detecting emotions,” the team wrote. “The bra form-factor was ideal because it allowed us to collect EKG [activity] near the heart.”

Let me get this straight. The bra feels what you’re feeling and warns that you do not need to ‘eat’ your sorrows (or excitement) away by sending a notification to your smartphone! Kind of like a mobile ‘Agony Aunt’ and hopefully we did not miss the subtle weight watch lifeline they have thrown in there.

The women participating in the study had to remove and recharge their bras every three to four hours, in what the researchers described as a “very tedious process.” The results, which were uploaded to Microsoft’s Azure Cloud, naturally, were fairly impressive: The bra could predict their emerging emotional states with roughly 75% accuracy. (The women reported their moods every hour in smartphone diaries.)

Talk about a device that is close to your heart. Literally. Remember the weight watch plug i threw in earlier? Well, reports say one thing the researchers haven’t tested yet is whether an alert informing you that you’re in an overeating mood — which the paper describes as an “appropriately timed, personalized intervention” — will actually make much of a difference.

While we muster anxiety at the advent of the smart bra, Microsoft is pressing ahead with the device anyway. The team’s next challenge, according to their paper, is how to build a robust, real-world system that “stands up to everyday challenges with regards to battery life, comfortability and suitability for both men and women.”

That’s right: Microsoft doesn’t want to leave men out of the equation. The team explored whether boxers or briefs might do the trick, but found male underwear to be too far away from the heart. Perhaps we will see the rise of the Microsoft smart bra for men on a diet. Can I get an EewMen?