Sunburn Alert: Alsatian startups invented the bikini … – TF1

After the toothbrush or sneakers, the swimsuit in turn becomes “connected”: this is the challenge of an SME of Mulhouse, whose bikinis equipped with a solar collector prevent smartphone by their owner that it must be coated with sunscreen. “The idea came to me just one day when I saw someone taking a sunburn on the beach,” said Marie Spinali.

Since mid-May, the start-up she runs, Spinali Design, sells this innovation from its website. “I thought, ‘after all, there are many flower pots that warn when the plants are thirsty, we should therefore invent something to warn when the sun is too strong,’” says the young woman, who hopes to sell this a thousand years of these new kind of swimsuits, entirely “made in France”, and currently only offered to women.

On the bikini, a premium product sold 149 euros and made to measure, is attached a small tight black sensor that measures the ultraviolet radiation. The information is transmitted to the smartphone or the tablet of the user, which will be clarified before skin type and level of tanning . Armed with these data, the application only has to trigger an “alert sunscreen” … which can even be sent to a third smartphone, leaving it to him to coat his beloved cream.

Towards miniaturized sensors

“It is not a gimmick,” says Ms. Spinali, noting that ” when people think to put cream, often it is too late, they have already taken sunburn. ” For Dr. Claudine Blanchet-Bardon, Vice President of the National Trade Union
dermatologists, “the approach is interesting because everything that can warn people against UV exposure is worth taking.” However, “the fact that it is a bikini, it will not, it does not send the right message. For the best protection against the sun is not too exposed, and keep clothes” adds the specialist, who annually organizes a day of prevention against cancers of the skin.

Currently, the sensor is not properly integrated into the swimsuit: when the user wants to sunbathe on the stomach, it must detach it and place it on his briefcase. “The UV sensors connected to a mobile app, it’s not really new or revolutionary
” said Yves-Marie Boulvert, journalist for the specialized site “ObjetConnecté.net”. However, “in principle subject can be interesting because it meets a need. But the price is too high,” slice the specialist.

In the future, project designers dream of moving to the next step: “We work with nanotechnology researchers at Grenoble’s Commissariat of Atomic Energy to develop miniaturized sensors, which are fully integrated in textiles, “said Marie Spinali. Male models should follow, and for children – with function geolocation, finding lost kids on the beach.