Undershirt technology wears well
Fabric emits health data to aid Kanaan
Tony Kanaan occasionally does what many drivers on I-465 in Indianapolis do every day — he grips the steering wheel too hard.
That habit — often exacerbated by dehydration — can lead to debilitating forearm cramps and numbness, especially at critical times late in races. For years, Kanaan has sought solutions to the problem. Until he realized he was wearing one.
Meet his magic undershirt. Made of fireproof Nomex and designed by engineers at NTT Data, the primary sponsor on Kanaan’s car, the shirt was used in six races last season to monitor Kanaan’s heart rate and respiration. This season, a third measurement was added: muscle movement in Kanaan’s forearms.
“What the shirt is capable of gave me an idea,” Kanaan told USA TODAY Sports on Wednes- day at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. “We’d never measured tension in my forearms before because we didn’t have a device to do it. When they came up with this, it showed me that I was squeezing the steering wheel more than I had to. It doesn’t make the car go any faster. It just wears out my forearms faster.”
Worn under Kanaan’s firesuit, the shirt acts as fireproofing protection and sensor. The fabric of the shirt — not wires or a separate device — senses electrical activity.
“We’re not talking about a bracelet or a separate device; it’s the fabric itself,” said Adam Nelson, vice president, industry solutions, health care and life sciences at NTT Data, a Tokyo-based global system integration company. “Because it’s electroconductive polymer, it picks up the heart’s electrical activity. If you position the fabric on certain muscles, it picks up the muscle activity. … It’s a very different type of bio-signal that we capture with the fabric.”
By paying attention to the data captured by the shirt, Kanaan has been able to better understand where and when on particular racetracks he’s squeezing the wheel with too much force.
“When you’re on the limit at 220 mph, you’re not thinking about that kind of thing,” Kanaan said. “Those are the things the shirt has given me more knowledge about, and I’ve been able to re-adapt. Now I actually know how much strength I put into it and where I’m doing it.”
As he prepares for the 100th Indianapolis 500, the next step in Kanaan’s anti-forearm cramp campaign has become clear — knowing in real time when he’s squeezing too hard.
He and his team came close to realizing that before a Verizon IndyCar Series race April 24 in Birmingham, Ala. By using the measurements gathered by the shirt and matching them to certain data points in the car’s telem- etry and global positioning systems, NTT Data engineers showed Kanaan after practice when and where he was gripping the wheel too hard.
“We were able to show Tony during turns the points at which he was not under stress — meaning he wasn’t under the stress of Gs or turning the steering wheel,” Nelson said. “Yet he was using his forearm muscles higher than average. There were three points during the race where we found he could relax his arms more than he was doing in order to stave off cramping later in the race.”
What truly captured Kanaan’s imagination about the shirt, though, was the potential of its applications beyond racing. Nelson indicated the fabric technology has unlimited possibilities in the medical field, including monitoring patients’ medical information, preventing falls, helping at-home recovery and even helping to prevent infant deaths.
“This is what interested me about it. ... This could apply someday to hospitals,” Kanaan said. “That’s further down the road, but it’s one of the reasons I felt the need to do this.”