OMbra is a fitness tracker disguised as a sports bra

SAMANTHA MURPHY KELLY

Fitness trackers are everywhere, and now you'll even find them under your clothes.

Smart clothing company OM, known for making web-connected workout shirts, has been getting a lot of attention at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show for its unique take on wearables. In this case, we're talking about its smart sports bra, the OMBra, a concept that's more than four years in the making.

The core of the OMbra, a small black box that sits above the torso, houses a range of sensors that track running performance indicators, such as distance, cadence, pace, heart rate and calories. Positioned in a similar place to where a heart-rate strap may sit on the body, the bra collects data about your workout and sends it directly to a corresponding app.

"In our research, we learned women don't like chest straps — men don't typically like them either — but females particularly dislike it because it has to coexist with the bra," OM co-founder, Stéphane Marceau, told Mashable. "We wanted to design a sports bra that could serve two purposes at the same time."

While this may seem like a gimmick, the concept and the app are quite intelligent: It tracks how much you're moving (activity), your breathing (respiration) and heart-rate. At the end of a workout, you get a score of 1 to 10, calculated by these three measurements.

The smart bra also monitors how soon your body recovers from a workout and matches that data up against others in your age range.

The design, which comes in various colors, is made of stretchy material that allows the bra to move as you do, while providing support at the same time. The start-up kit is $149 for a bra and the fitness tracker — additional bras are $59 (the fitness core can be detached from one and connected to another).

However, the company is already working to bring the concept to other types of bras, as well.

"The natural place to start was with sports bras to cater to people who wanted fitness tracking, but we want to include the technology into other everyday and intimate-looking bras," Marceau added. "It's already in the works.

"A few years from now, you'll go to the mall and buy a bra and it will be connected. When you go to buy a car, you don't ask the dealer for a gas gauge and a speedometer. You just expect it to be there."