A team of students has developed a bracelet that acts like a wearable air conditioning unit for your wrist. Called Wristify, the band directs either cool or warm air to the surface of a wearer’s skin to balance the body’s temperature.
Wristify was developed by Matthew Smith, Sam Shames, Megha Jain and David Cohen-Tanugi from MIT, who recently set up embr labs. However, unlike a true air conditioner, the device only adjusts the temperature of the wrist, and not the humidity. Last year, the team’s concept won the $10,000 (£6,100) first prize in the Making and Designing Materials Engineering Contest at the Massachusetts-based university, and it is now a finalist in Intel’s Make it Wearable competition.
As a result, the team has been awarded an additional $50,000 (£30,700) to help make the band a reality. In addition to the prize money, all finalists are given mentorship and technical support from the Santa Clara-based tech giant. A prototype version has been developed, and is undergoing tests. Designer Niccolo Casas has also created a concept illustration of what the final model will look like.
The company explained how Wristify works:
‘Wristify uses all-natural waves of coolness or heat to activate the thermoreceptors on the surface of your skin, leaving you feeling rejuvenated. ‘It gently glows blue when cooling you, and glows a warm orange while heating you up.‘Our comfort depends on a lot more than just core temperature, and we have drawn on the last 30 years of thermal comfort research to design a device for maximised comfort that is also discreet and energy-efficient.
