If you've never heard of Ardica, it's a company that's hoping to incorporate technology into clothing. It's already released a flexible, lightweight battery pack (called Moshi) and an adapter to connect your devices to that pack.
Now it's trying to inspire entrepreneurs and apparel designers to integrate its technology into wearable products.
The company held its People's Choice design contest on Saturday, and the winners showed off some innovative use cases for the technology. The grand prize winner was an integrated sleeping bag/pad combo with a heating and charging system, designed by a group of students from Virginia Tech. With an ever-expanding number of people going camping each year, the concept of a heated and cell-friendly sleeping bag has appeal -- although the product isn't currently slated for commercial production
The first runner up was another student team that designed a powered filtration mask for coal workers, noting that most coal workers don't use lung protection because they stifle breathing. With filtration (powered by Ardica's battery pack) blowing clean air into their respirators, miners could work hard and safe at the same time.
Another runner up idea involved inductively powered glowing shot glasses for serving drinks in night clubs. The team claimed that "glowing drinks are novel, exciting. Excited people drink more."
The goal of the competition, as one Ardica official put it, was to "expand people's consciousness about power and get people thinking about what they would do if they weren't tethered to the AA battery for energy." Apparently, some would battle Black Lung and others would sell more Jaeger. In either case, there could be profits to be made.
Ardica's Moshi -- that 8-celled black pad pictured above -- holds 1.2 Ah worth of power per cell at 5 volts DC. It weighs less than a pound.
The outdoors equipment is just the most immediate application of Ardica's technology. Though Hugo Boss and LL Bean are also interested, the power system was designed with soldiers in mind. With $5 million in DOD funding back in 2003, Ardica's goal was to get the battery weight for a soldier from 30 lbs for a 72 hour mission down to 10 lbs. Fuel cells were the immediate solution and, indeed, the company hopes to release fuel cell or fuel cell hybrid technology in a year or so.
In the mean time, Director of the Board Hap Klopp explains that hydrogen fuel cells just aren't consumer friendly because of fuel distribution and the "Hindenburg syndrome": People are afraid of hydrogen bursting into flames on their clothing. So, for now, Ardica is sticking with lithium-ion batteries and marketing itself to organizations that keep people outdoors.
Currently, Mountain Hardwear and Sitka Gear are the earliest adopters of Ardica in the garment industry. Klopp explains that Ardica's plan was to start at the top of the pyramid and let the others in the outdoors industry follow the example set by MHW and Sitka. A MHW representative present at the event said that sales of Ardica-enabled outerwear had been good but that next year, they were expecting 4-5 times the growth.
A retailer based in Spokane, Wash., Mountain Gear, reportedly told Mountain Hardwear "Send as much as you can get us, we'll take it all." Given that kind of enthusiasm, it looks like we'll be hearing more about Ardica in the coming year.
The company is based in San Francisco and currently has 15 employees.
[Photo credit: Ken Yeung]