New biometric fire resistant shirt should contribute to more safety

Motor racing is an innovative sport when it comes to engines and cars, but there is also a lot of innovation in the peripheral areas. One of the recent developments is a biometric shirt that drivers are able to use. The FIA has approved a new fire-resistant and biometric shirt from Marelli and OMP Racing.

The shirt is short for VISM which stands for 'Vital Signs Monitor' and this has come about through a collaboration between Marelli and OMP Racing. Apart from being fire resistant, this shirt is also equipped with a system that can read vital signs from the driver and communicate them to people at the pit wall.

With this shirt you can remotely monitor stress, fatigue, heart rate and breath. The shirt has three primary goals: performance monitoring, data collection for training and safety. An interesting concept, but whether it will be used in Formula 1 is still unclear.

"VISM is a tool for professional drivers to monitor biometric data," says Riccardo De Filippi, CEO of Marelli, "It is designed with a direct interface to the data acquisition and telemetry systems of a race car and includes end-to-end protection of sensitive data, giving the user full control of its use.

"We believe this experience is a major step forward in the development of safety systems as well as active driver aids, for passenger cars too," according to De Filippi.