Designers are experimenting with AI to make clothes and footwear more interactive
Designers are experimenting with AI to make clothes and footwear more interactive
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/ai-clothing-design-9.7219397
Publish Date: 2026-06-07 04:00:00
Source Domain: www.cbc.ca
Imagine AI in your shirt. Your shoes. Your socks.
Toronto-based start-up Aurmada is one of a growing number of companies and designers trying to use AI to make clothing and footwear more interactive, testing ways to enable it to monitor everything from your gait to how close someone is standing.
Nearly two in five Canadians own wearable technology, according to a 2024 survey conducted by Leger. Smartwatches make up most of the market, but Aurmada CEO Zavosh Zaboliyan, 36, says that tech will soon be integrated into clothes, too, not just accessories.
“We’ve reached this technological advancement as a species, and why didn’t our clothing keep up?” he said.
Zaboliyan co-founded Aurmada after a car-crash injury. While re-training himself to walk, he grew tired of long waits for X-ray results and doctors’ assessments and started thinking about how he could get real-time information about what was wrong with his gait so he could correct it.
“Our body is constantly sending a signal,” he said. “We just don’t have the right tools to listen.”
AI integrated into clothing has the potential to do things like monitor and analyze vital signs and send them on to a doctor or caregiver, track your movements or detect objects in your blind spot, he said.
These shoe sole sensors detect how your weight is distributed and could identify asymmetries in a person’s gait to help with physical rehabilitation. (Prasanjeet Choudhury/CBC)
Alexa in your T-shirt?
Aurmada, which launched in October, got a chance to show off its designs at a technology showcase in Toronto last week.
The items on display included sensors embedded into shoe soles that can detect weight distribution, which, Zaboliyan says, could help with rehabilitation from injuries that impact walking.
The team is also working on sensors that are small enough to be sewn into clothing and, using AI, act like a virtual assistant that can answer questions.
WATCH | See how Aurmada’s Ai alerts users to what’s around them:
Toronto startup…
