Footfalls & Heartbeats – Wearables Smart-Textile Solution – SOLD

Metis Partners is pleased to present a unique opportunity to acquire the intellectual property (“IP”) portfolio owned by Footfalls & Heartbeats Limited (“FHL”) or the “Company”).

Footfalls & Heartbeats is a smart textile business whose core technology focuses on patent-protected textile structures, using electrically conductive yarn to form a repeatable and sensitive sensor network, directly within a textile. This technology represents the next generation of smart textiles where sensor functionality is integrated into the structure of textiles or composites to allow real-time monitoring.

• Acquire a disruptive and commercially scalable patent-protected technology for smart textiles with applications in sports, medical, automotive and industrial markets.
• To acquire an IP portfolio that supports a licensing revenue model and underpins a low-cost manufacturing process for smart wearables.
• Product development to date has been focused on MVP-driven partnerships and collaborations with global players in the aforementioned four big markets including Brooks Running, FORD, Trelleborg and Bosch.
• Applications included pressure sensors for improving comfort and monitoring occupational health in addition to their ability to focus on consumer opportunities including monitoring an individual’s pose and position in various situations.

The Company owns three patent families with granted patents in key territories such as the USA, Germany, UK and other European territories. Eleven granted patents and various patent applications underpin their proprietary sensor technology, which measures the interaction between user and textile across three platforms:

• Push Platform: tracking pressure points across surface or structure that can be housed in clothing, seats, socks, shoes, beds and automotive interiors.
• Stretch Platform: smart sleeve technology that detects strain, accurately measuring movement, flexibility, and extension of joints, for use in injury rehabilitation.
• Touch Platform: bioelectrical textile sensors knitted into garments that measure human physiological parameters, including heart rate and EMG.      
  
  Info about patented technology & related IP assets
  
  The Company uses the 3D complexity of textiles to control the electrical contact resistance characteristics of the sensor formation. This converts into electrical signals which can be filtered, amplified, and analysed enabling it to track pressure points, accurately measure joint movement and measure physiological parameters. The textile sensors communicate via a wireless interface or may be connected directly to a networked device.
  
  FHL’s technology can be produced on standard knitting machines at minimal additional cost and the products are as durable as the textile. FHLs’ IP is an innovative and novel method of controlling yarn to yarn interactions that allow the signal output, repeatability and sensitivity of the sensor matrix to be controlled as a process during manufacture.