Smart shirts embedded with optic fibers can monitor wearer's condition and transmit data wirelessly.

Long a dream of geeks and science fiction writers, the smart shirt -- a wearable computer -- will hit store shelves next year. Far from a novelty, the list of people with a practical reason to get one is much longer than you might think. Funded by a grant from the US Navy -- which was looking for a garment to wirelessly report when its wearer had been wounded -- Georgia Tech has developed a smart shirt prototype. The shirt evolved from a rough-hewn military vest to a shirt with plastic-polymer optical fibers woven in as data buses. That makes the shirt into what its designers call a "wearable motherboard." The garment comes with data disks, which are used as plug-in sensors to monitor the wearer's vital signs. The developers foresee the shirt being used by soldiers, athletes, astronauts, airline pilots and anyone whose vital statistics are of critical importance. The data points connect to a proprietary wireless transmitter, which will be as small as a pager.