Footfalls & Heartbeats has secured funding from the European Commission through the European Smart Textile Accelerator program (SmartX). The new project will focus on developing KiTT, its motion tracking knee sleeve, which sits over the joint directly and provides advanced data and insight into its condition.
Footfalls & Heartbeats was founded by New Zealand chemist Simon McMaster who brings many years’ experience researching intelligent textiles. Footfalls & Heartbeats has developed a revolutionary and proprietary process for manufacturing smart fabric which uses nano-scale interactions within the textile to make the fabric itself the sensor, avoiding the need for wires or miniature electronics.
KiTT’s primary target markets are health and well-being and sports and fitness, where it will assist patients with injury rehabilitation and physiotherapy and help monitor athletes during activities. The SmartX accelerator program focuses on plugging the gap between smart textile prototypes and market readiness and is funding and supporting 40 pioneering SME projects across Europe.
Simon McMaster, the founder of Footfalls & Heartbeats, said, “Footfalls is producing state-of-the-art textile technology to assist remote physiological monitoring in many sectors. We are grateful to receive the support and funding from SmartX and looking forward to getting started on our project.”
As part of the product development, Footfalls & Heartbeats will be collaborating on app development and maintenance with Revolve, a software development agency based in Poland, and security, hardware, and electronics development with Ioetec, a UK-based internet of things security firm.
