Hexoskin unveils new biometric shirts to watch how well kids exercise

CES 2015: Children’s athletic performance can be monitored through a connected app

The Hexoskin Junior shirt (Hexoskin)

New shirts unveiled by biometric clothing firm Hexoskin will allow parents and coaches to keep track how their children are exercising through a connected app.

The Hexoskin Junior shirt features built-in sensors that monitor heart rate, step count, sleep duration and calories burned. It can use those inputs to monitor how well children recover from exercise, their acceleration and how much they’re breathing and sleeping.

That information can be viewed through an already released Hexoskin app, which is available for iOS and Android and can visualise much of the data that the shirt takes. It can link in with GPS data to watch how a person has run, and how their data, including heart rate and breathing, changed over that time.

The Hexoskin Dashboard, which shows detailed visualisations of the data collected by the app (Hexoskin)

Users can also log on to the company’s “online dashboard”, which gives in-depth data and visualisations of exercise.

The shirt and the app have long been available for adults, with a starter kit that includes the shirt, a Bluetooth recording device and a USB cable selling for $399 (£260). The shirts on their own are $169.

The Bluetooth recording device is not necessary for the Hexoskin to work, but lets it take data for a long time without using much battery.

The Hexoskin Junior starter kit and shirts are about $20 less.