The power shirts - or flexible, integrated-energy devices - are basically wearable batteries that charge whenever the person moves.

While they are being developed for military purposes - for energy supply for soldiers in the field - Best says they could be used to power mobile phones, portable music players and other small electrical devices.

"The technology basically enables you to get rid of the battery as we know it and will open up a whole new world for designers to put things in places that have merely been the realm of science fiction, so to speak," he says.

"So, for example, you could quite easily build a device into your shirt, where your shirt literally becomes a mobile phone or iPod."

Dr Richard Helmer, of the CSIRO's Textile and Fibre Technology division, agrees.

"Our clothing has the potential to play a very different role going into the future," he says.

"There are people all over the world engineering all sorts of different functionality into clothing, from sensing things to doing things, to self-cleaning, all sorts of things."

Helmer recently developed an "air-guitar" or a wearable-instrument shirt.

With sensors embedded in the sleeves, the shirt can detect and interpret the air-guitarist's arm movements, wirelessly transmitting that information to a computer, which generates the appropriate sounds.

Helmer says the same technology could be adapted for uses from medical rehabilitation and sports training to virtual computer games.

"You can use it for all sorts of things from interactive computer games to things like dance classes where you could wear an item of clothing that could tell you whether your technique or posture or whatever was correct. The possibilities are limitless really."

Helmer says that while military, medical and other industrial uses have driven a lot of the early research and development into intelligent clothing, more commercial applications for the technology are expected.

"Clothes are something that people wear around the clock and I can't see that changing in the next 100 years or so. So, to use that as a platform for new technology is really very exciting."