Personal Fitness 2.0 – Artificial Intelligence, Smart Clothing and the Challenges and Opportunities in the Disruption of Industries

The Bachelor thesis „Personal Fitness 2.0: Artificial Intelligence, Smart Clothing and the Challenges and Opportunities in the Disruption of Industries” examines the disruptive dynamics of the technologies smart clothing and artificial intelligence (AI) for the field of personal fitness, with the intention to show the development of this field towards a more technologically advanced field of personal fitness 2.0 which is driven by the use of smart clothing and artificial intelligence.

Over the years, there has been quite a development in the fields of smart clothing and artificial intelligence and these technologies have made themselves more and more indispensable in a variety of industries including the fitness industry with its main focus on the physical improvement and maintenance of the human body. Thus, the use of innovative and performance enhancing technologies like smart clothing and artificial intelligence in personal fitness can therefore enormously increase, and above all, improve said focus as well as all systems of the human body.

In the disruption of industries technologies like smart clothing and AI come into play to exceed possibilities and push limitations by creating an interface between fitness, apparel, technology and human. Though many of the emerging technological solutions can positively affect the human body while exercising and bring many new opportunities for the fitness industry as well, there are some uncertainties when applying technology to other industries like fashion and fitness. A variety of factors have to be considered in order to successfully intertwine technology with fashion, for example degree of technology integration, benefits and potential threats for consumers and companies, regulations or considerations in terms of technology integration like comfort and mobility and many more, which this thesis aims to address.

It is important to understand the constantly evolving technological possibilities we have today, especially when being surrounded by them in our daily lives. Therefore, this thesis intents to establish a comprehensible definition and status quo for the disruption and emergence ofpersonal fitness, smart clothing and AI, which are then combined with best practice cases for the application of smart clothing and AI in the field of personal fitness as well as expert interviews in order to identify benefactors, opportunities as well as challenges of said technologies for the field of personal fitness 2.0 fueledy by smart clothing on the basis of artificial intelligence.