Jacket that keeps its cool

Graduates design garment that adjusts its temperature

It may be summertime, but let's face it, in Britain at least, by time autumn creeps around (which isn't that long), there's no telling what the weather will do. And three former students from one Ohio university may have just come up with the answer: a jacket that changes temperature with the conditions.

How many times have you stepped out on a chilly morning, cosily wrapped in a thick winter jacket, only to seriously regret your choice of attire later in the day as the weather warms

William 'Wes' Schake, a former electrical engineering student at the University of Akron - where the weather is as changeable as an indecisive chameleon - had had enough. "It was the typical dilemma we all face in between seasons," he says, and instead of shivering all morning and sweating all afternoon, he teamed up with fellow students Christopher Campbell and Rashad Reynolds to design a 'smart' jacket that literally puts its wearers in their personal comfort zones.

The result is a jacket that is not too hot, nor too cold, but is just right for changing conditions. This ingenious invention comes in fashionable bumblebee yellow and black and is known as the Climate Wear Jacket. Incorporating sensors that both detect and display external temperatures as well as offering a facility where the user can preset the temperature, the jacket has the unique ability to adjust and regulate comfort conditions according to what the wearer wants. The Climate Wear system uses a 12-volt battery that can be programmed by any smart phone (such as Palm, Blackberry or iPhone), maintains the desired temperature, and alerts its wearer if the two-hour battery life is running low.

"We've demonstrated the jacket in front of friends, family, faculty and peers and have been very warmly (no pun intended) received," Campbell says.

Although this jacket is merely a prototype and costs roughly £360 to make, the graduate team aim to break into the commercial market as mass production would bring the cost down significantly. "We feel there is a big market for our design," Campbell says. "We would like to target sporting fans [who] may be outside in chilly temperatures for extended periods. Also, for your average Joe who spends a few hours a week outside shovelling their driveway or scraping ice off their car, Climate Wear could make that experience at least a bit more tolerable."

The electronics are removable, so a wearer could swap them into other wired up jackets, and the garment itself is washable. It seems likely that this one-kind-fits-all-seasons attire has a palpable future. Watch this space.