Football shirts are being developed which have their own on-board computer, which will be able to track the pace and acceleration of the wearer.Researchers at the University of Birmingham, UK, who are specialists in “wearable” computers, are exploring ways of remotely monitoring the performance of people playing sports.

This will help to tackle the difficulties in analysing aspects of players’ games such as speed–which can usually only be explored in a laboratory setting.

With embedded computers which send back data wirelessly, the performance of players in a live match can be recorded with great accuracy.