Internet of Things & Wearable Technology Insights

Sunaina had landed at the Delhi airport in the wee hours of the morning and was in a cab when she noticed the driver taking a detour. That made her uneasy. He said he wanted to fill petrol. But the car was entering unknown territory and he was refusing to stop.

So she did something James Bond would do. She reached for her glass pendant and pressed it twice…

Sunaina is not her real name, but her story is. And unlike what happens to many women travelers in India, nothing untoward happened in this case. The pendant – actually a gadget called SAFER that can send out SOS alerts – might have saved the day.

“It served as an empowering device. The woman could convince the driver that he was being monitored,” says Paras Batra, co-founder of Leaf Wearables, the startup that makes SAFER....

Woolly sweaters may soon be put to work powering your electronic gadgets, thanks to a yarn-like lithium-ion battery.

Small, flexible electronics promise “smart” clothes of the future, such as T-shirts loaded with sensors that can discreetly keep track of your vital signs and check for health problems. Now Huisheng Peng and his colleagues at Fudan University in Shanghai, China, have created a thread-like battery that can be woven into smart textiles to keep them running smoothly....

No matter how seriously you take shopping, there are really only two ways to do it: in stores and online.

But if the new wearable tech software pioneered by Israeli startup Awear Solutions takes off, there could be a third way to spot the clothes and accessories you covet: on the streets.

Awear functions through a digital chip embedded in garments. Users who have the Awear app can use it to scan, say, a stranger’s cute bag at a coffee shop, as long as they’re within 30 feet of the item. If the bag’s equipped with an Awear chip, the shopper can buy it directly through the app....