Smart clothes technology. Smart clothes technology

14.08.2023 dakus Article

What is Smart Clothing?

So-called Smart clothing is a futuristic form of clothing that functions as an active device, for example releasing chilled water vapor when it senses its wearer is hot. The term Smart clothing denotes the presence of embedded electronics. Some forms of Smart clothing have been created, but none have really been mass-produced, and many more are the subject of science fiction stories and cannot be made with current technology. Smart clothing is of great interest to the world’s militaries, which often try to pack as much functionality as possible into a single soldier’s equipment.

Military and commercial research scientists seek to develop Smart clothing that possesses many of the useful properties of computers – the ability to store and manipulate data; display images, text, and video; connect to the Internet; offer input devices; and so on. Other possible features of Smart clothing include the ability to detect chemicals in the air, quickly harden on contact with a speeding bullet, change color or opacity, generate power from the wearer’s movement, record the wearer’s speech and activity, and even project an image of the scene behind the wearer, creating a crude form of camouflage-based invisibility. Various “power suits” in science fiction and fantasy display these qualities.

Clothes are usually meant to be soft, light, thin, and flexible, whereas most electronics are hard, heavy, thick, and rigid. Only the most advanced, custom-made electronics have properties desirable in clothing, though many millions of dollars in venture capital are put towards developing such advanced electronics. For example, it is commonly thought that flexible displays will be commercialized before 2010. These will be one of the first big steps toward Smart clothing.

Clothing integrated with electronics exists today, but it cannot really be called “Smart.” There is a jacket available which can be plugged into an iPod and used to navigate song lists. Clothing embedded with RFID tags has been used to operate doors which detect the tag and open in response to it. Space suits used by astronauts are dense with miniaturized electronics used for a variety of purposes.

Many futurists think that one day, everyone will wear Smart clothing, because it will be so useful. There are few inanimate objects so intimately connected with humans and our daily lives in the way that clothing is, and it would be quite convenient if we could increase its functionality.

Michael is a longtime EasyTechJunkie contributor who specializes in topics relating to paleontology, physics, biology, astronomy, chemistry, and futurism. In addition to being an avid blogger, Michael is particularly passionate about stem cell research, regenerative medicine, and life extension therapies. He has also worked for the Methuselah Foundation, the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, and the Lifeboat Foundation.

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Discussion Комментарии и мнения владельцев

@lmorales. I definitely agree that there is potential, but some one has to actually approach the subject first. While this article obviously states that fact, I don’t think anyone has really gone through the trouble of finding out exactly how to make it or gotten dirty in the Smart clothing department yet. at least not dirty enough it would seem.

@BelugaWhale. I think this might be a type of Smart clothing. I like how the article discusses the difference between Smart parts clothing and regular clothes. The fact that clothes are meant to be light and airy and that electronics are heavy and hard means that some one would have to find a fabric or make a synthetic that had the properties described in the article above.

We saw a sample in my textiles class that was made from old cassette tape ribbon, so why wouldn’t this type of clothing be achievable someday? Very interesting article all around.

BelugaWhale October 22, 2010

@WalrusTusk. If you think about it there are some types of Smart clothing already out there. At least I consider it Smart clothing. Work out clothing like t shirts sometimes come with the water wicking ability built in. This type of clothing wicks away sweat and stuff to leave the wearer cooler while they are going through their work out routine.

WalrusTusk October 22, 2010

@ivanka. It would be really nice, wouldn’t it? I guess for now though, we will have to all stuff battery operated electric blankets under our jackets and walk around with those little hand held battery powered personal fans. It would be really great to have trendy clothing that serves more than just the fashion purpose for sure.

It would be really great to have winter coat and pants that you could turn on heat when the weather gets really cold. That would come in really handy in cold climates.

Of course vice-versa would not be shabby either in hot climates.

Smart clothes technology

Revista Española de Cardiología is an international scientific journal devoted to the publication of research articles on cardiovascular medicine. The journal, published since 1947, is the official publication of the Spanish Society of Cardiology and founder of the REC Publications journal family. Articles are published in both English and Spanish in its electronic edition.

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¿Prendas inteligentes para cuidar a las personas o personas inteligentes que utilizan prendas para cuidarse?

b Departamento de Tecnología Fotónica y Bioingeniería, Grupo LST, ETSIT, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

Since the dawn of human life, we have used clothes and accessories to protect our health and defend ourselves from the elements and danger. From the mid-1990s onward, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology began to explore the possibility of incorporating microprocessors into textiles. 1 Since then, 3 areas of innovation have strongly promoted the development of Smart clothing: the introduction of new fibers in textiles (eg, conductive materials), the miniaturization of electronic devices, and the development of wireless communication. The latter enables clothes to communicate and interact with personal computers and mobile phones.

Smart clothes were originally designed for use in clinical settings. However, thanks to miniaturization and mobile technology, their use has recently proliferated in the general population as a tool for health and wellbeing. According to the World Health Organization, mobile health (known as mHealth), will soon be available to 90% of the world population. mHealth has undergone exponential growth and currently there are more than 100 000 medical applications that can be used on computers or mobile phones. Of these applications, 30% are for the use of patients and health professionals and 70% for the general population. 2,3 It is estimated that within a few years 65% of mHealth applications will be used for monitoring chronic diseases. In global terms, it is thought that the mHealth business will have a turnover of more than 27 000 million in 2017, with 90% of the market share divided proportionally between Europe, Asia, and North America. However, this figure is small when compared with the indirect benefits of this technology. A report published in May 2011 estimated that the use of data generated by mobile applications (big data) could reduce fraud and improve efficiency to the point of saving €150 000 million per year in the European public sector. 4

In general, Smart clothes are based on using sensors to detect a variety of signals, which are usually converted into electrical signals. Currently, sensors can measure almost any parameter: pressure, stretch, temperature, humidity, and even various substances in blood, such as glucose. In addition, sensors are sufficiently small to allow them to be mounted in a tooth or a contact lens. 5

Since the time of the first textile sensors and Smart clothes, a fundamental aim has been to obtain a good ECG signal. 6,7 The first sensors measured and transmitted all the information that can be obtained from an electrocardiographic lead (ie, a signal with a sampling frequency of 4 ms). This signal is difficult to store on mobile devices due to the amount of space required and the difficulty of interacting with different operating systems. Most applications have been limited to measuring and transmitting the heart rate alone and to using technologies with well-defined standards, such as Smart Bluetooth, which has solved the problem of interoperability and drastically reduced costs. 8 Thus, heart rate can now be indirectly acquired without the need for an electrocardiographic signal. Nevertheless, the ECG signal remains the most widely used signal because its quality is sufficiently reliable to measure heart rate and because the devices used for its measurement are inexpensive and durable (they can last up to a year without changing the battery even when used for several hours a day). This technology is used in many textile sensors just to measure heart rate. However, some sportswear incorporates proprietary technology to analyze the ECG signal and provides the heart rate as well as QRS and P wave morphologies in some leads. These technologies are similar to conventional Holter monitoring but have the advantage of being more comfortable, having greater mobility, and providing a longer observation period. 9

In addition to devices able to acquire ECG signals, other technologies have been developed, such as photoplethysmography (PPG). This technology seems likely to become established and is based on detecting changes in blood volume by using an emitter and detector at the same site to measure reflected light (reflective PPG). This technology is used in bracelets and watches to measure heart rate. Companies such as Apple, Google, and Samsung are staking their Smart watches on this technology. Although entrepreneurial drive is very powerful, the cost of these devices is still higher than the cost of ECG-based monitors and their batteries still have to be recharged.

The Modulated Magnetic Signature of Blood (MMSB) is another upcoming technology, which detects fluctuations in the magnetic field created by the blood flowing through a section of the cardiovascular system. The magnetic flux can be used to show pulse and blood flow information, and can propagate through materials such as fabric (eg, clothing), through the body (eg, as blood), and through environmental pollutants (eg, water). Information on heart rate can be obtained by MMSB without the need for electrical or optical contact with the skin and has been favorably compared with ECG and PPG signals. 10

With the exclusion of military projects, most trials using Smart clothes have addressed health monitoring in general and cardiovascular health in particular.

Some of the most pioneering European projects have been developed by the MyHeart 6 and HeartCycle 7 consortiums. These projects began more than 10 years ago as part of the sixth and seventh European Union Framework Programs, which included more than 30 international associates (medical technology and telephone companies, universities, and hospitals). Their aim was to devise solutions for patient self-care, encourage heart-healthy lifestyles, and provide safety through widespread access to Rapid and effective care. They designed and used textiles and clothes with sensors to detect respiratory rate, heart rate, ECG analysis, proper acceleration, 3-dimensional movement, and oxygen saturation. They also made available devices for monitoring obesity and depression, for preventing myocardial infarction and stroke, and for remote cardiac rehabilitation, relaxation, and stress prevention. These projects particularly addressed the issues of patients with heart failure and the rehabilitation of patients with ischemic heart disease. Given the huge amount of healthcare resources needed to assist patients with these diseases, one of the main aims of these projects was to obtain sufficient information on the daily life of patients to allow prediction of recurrences before they occur, provide early treatment, and avoid hospitalization.

Currently, Smart garments are available that can analyze heart rate and changes in heart rate and ECG morphology. They can determine the presence of bradycardia or tachycardia, measure heart rate variability, and provide a rough differential diagnosis between supraventricular and ventricular arrhythmias. These advances are already a great achievement. A more difficult task is to assess ST-segment abnormalities, especially if they do not match symptoms suggestive of myocardial ischemia. However, this task is just as difficult when using conventional Holter monitoring.

In clinical practice, cardiac monitoring tools are needed such that when symptoms arise it is possible to identify what is happening in the heart, thereby helping us to provide patients with correct treatment. It is essential to be able to detect silent atrial fibrillation and initiate anticoagulation if needed, as well as to prevent sudden death in patients with damaged hearts and warning ventricular arrhythmias. Irrespective of these considerations, Smart clothes provide immense amounts of information, thus leading to huge increases in knowledge, and are clearly changing health worldwide. Their capacity to monitor a wide variety of diseases will soon provide vast amounts of information. In addition to its use by professionals and patients, this information will allow many processes to be automated, thus changing the physician’s role. In the near future, patients and nonpatients alike will experience a fundamental change by becoming active elements in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease. It is easy to imagine all this information being connected via an electronic medical record and managed by an artificial intelligence network.

Currently, the greatest area of uncertainty lies in knowing whether the use of Smart clothes will be able to change lifestyles. It is extremely complicated to design and conduct clinical studies to determine the independent benefit of Smart clothes in chronically ill patients. Factors such as adherence to protocols are both decisive and difficult to address. We do not know if the trend to use Smart clothes is driven by people who care more about their health than others and are willing to follow a healthier lifestyle. In contrast, adherence is most difficult to achieve in chronically ill patients with multiple comorbidities who sometimes appear to have given up altogether. Within this group, elderly patients represent the greatest challenge: they have few resources and need constant assistance to help them persevere with the self-care needed to maintain their health. In many cases, the main issue is to replace hospital care with home monitoring and office consultations with virtual consultations. To date, few studies have been published on the clinical success of the help provided by the use of Smart clothes. 11,12 Studies are underway, but until the results are available, we will continue to be surprised by new developments in medical technologies and by the information provided by implantable and nonimplantable sensors. 13,14 For example, despite the lack of adherence to specific treatments, a better clinical course than expected has been observed in some patients with heart failure. 7,15

J. Pérez-Villacastín has participated as a researcher in the MyHeart and HeartCycle projects.

Weaving the Future: A Step Closer to Smart and Wireless Clothing

When you meet someone and shake hands with them, you are sharing information: it is a friendly gesture that signifies a desire for social interaction. In the future, however, such a gesture may be used to share everything from your first and last name to your contact address. And that’s thanks to a new generation of Smart clothing that will make it possible to exchange data and activate devices utilizing sensors and integrated circuits. It’s a technological breakthrough that will advance so-called invisible computing. And two researchers from the University of California have just given it a new push.

In this article, you will read about:

What is Smart clothing

Wearables are all those electronic devices that can be worn as an extension of our body. This includes sports wristbands, smartwatches. and even Smart contact lenses. By definition, Smart clothing is the ultimate wearable. After all, if we are wearing anything, it is usually clothing.

Smart clothing is any garment equipped with sensors, with the ability to communicate with other devices and computing capacity. However, the latter is not essential since the data processing can be executed on another device, such as a smartphone. There are passive, active, or even ultra-intelligent Smart clothing, i.e., that adapts to the environment as if it were an organism.

Here are some examples of Smart clothing:

Pajamas with sleep-monitoring capabilities
Footwear or socks with an integrated pedometer
Belts with warning systems in work environments
T-shirts that measure heart rate
Haptic garments for people with deafness
Jackets with integrated heat capacity and thermostats

Garments that talk to each other

So far, so good, but then comes the real world where daily wear, washing, and the ravages of time make it challenging to integrate fragile electronics. According to researchers at the University of California who have just unveiled their new Smart clothing prototype, the key lies in simplification. And it involves creating a new NFC (Near-Field Communication) standard.

The system they have opted for is flexible, durable, and battery-free. To achieve this, they have used copper and aluminum foils modified to operate employing magnetic induction. Thanks to the treatment applied, they can emit signals up to three feet away, unlike current NFC technologies, which have a range of fewer than three inches. The modification of these metals turns them into metamaterials, i.e., elements with radically different capabilities to the original ones.

The research team points out that magnetic induction dispenses with continuous circuits throughout the garment. Thus, for example, it is possible to integrate these meshes into existing garments so that pants can measure the number of steps and a T-shirt can measure heart rate. It also makes it easier for two different people’s garments, whether the sleeves of a shirt or gloves, to communicate with each other.

This quality also implies the possibility of creating Smart clothing for hospitals with multiple integrated functionalities. In any of these cases, bringing a cell phone within range would activate the sensors.

An unprecedented approach: AI-enabled tactile wearables

While it is true that Smart clothing applications are promising, they must compete against other wearables. For example, if someone wears a smartwatch that measures their pulse, they are likely to do without a T-shirt that offers similar functionality. That’s why researchers are still looking for breakthrough applications that will enable the leap to mass-adopted Smart clothing.

One of the most exciting applications in this regard comes from the laboratories of MIT in the United States. Their approach has been to develop tactile Smart clothing, i.e., clothing that captures a person’s whole-body movements. This would range from twisting an arm to bending or stretching.

The prototypes they have developed use conventional textile fibers combined with specially modified pressure-sensing fibers that operate as sensors. Thus, the Smart garment does not have isolated sensors, but becomes a sensor in its entirety. Among the garments, they have presented are socks that monitor step patterns or a T-shirt that monitors all movements or contact surfaces. And all this in washable and flexible garments.

The fact that the sensors are distributed throughout the garment also reduces the impact of wear and tear. Thus, in anticipation of any part of the garment ceasing to emit signals, the inventors have bolstered their technology with an AI system that detects the problem and automatically adjusts the interpretation of the data.

The researchers believe that this innovative Smart clothing technology could have interesting applications in the training of athletes, correcting bad posture, or rehabilitating patients. They even suggest that these garments could teach robots to move in different situations.

If you want to learn more about these technologies, you should definitely check out articles like this one on life-saving garments.

Where Are The Smart Clothes?

W e have smartphones, Smart TVs and Smart cars, but where are the Smart clothes? This question has been asked several times, and it’s a question also asked by researchers in wearable technology and Smart fabrics. When it comes to clothing that can say monitor health and well-being, it was assumed if it was made, people would buy the technology. But markets don’t behave that way, and not all technology sees the light of day in the marketplace. Many of the world’s discoveries are still sitting in research labs all around the world in what is commonly known as the “valley of death.” A team of wearable technology and Smart fabrics researchers from the Wilson College of Textiles at Raleigh, N.C.-based North Carolina State University (NC State) didn’t want to be stuck in that valley — their goal was to cross the valley.

The NEXT research team consisted of Dr. Jesse Jur, a NC State Wilson College of Textiles associate professor of Textile Engineering, Chemistry and Science, and thrust leader in Wearability at the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Engineering Research Center on Advanced Self-Powered Systems of Integrated Sensors and Technologies (ASSIST); Entrepreneurial Lead doctoral student Raj Bhakta; as well as seasoned entrepreneurial executive Bob Sheehan, who had served as a national sales executive at Gillette and numerous pharmaceutical companies. Excited by the prospect of making an impact in the industry of Smart textiles, the team set out to see what opportunities were out there for this burgeoning space.

Most often, researchers ask probing questions, identify hypotheses, and design experiments to validate the hypotheses — also known as the scientific method. In the world of science, discoveries are non-linear and require both analytical and qualitative thinking. Having worked through this method, the research team wanted to dive deep into the fundamental problems from a business standpoint and determine why we don’t have Smart clothes that monitor one’s health among other futuristic features.

Before getting into the nitty gritty of the research team’s journey towards bringing a Smart fabrics technology to market, let’s talk about what are Smart clothes and some history about this field.

What Are Smart Clothes?

Clothes are integral to the human condition — they’re used to express identity, protect from the environment, and now are being used in health applications. There’s a wide variety of use-cases, but the first documented idea for an intelligent shirt came from Atlanta-based Georgia Institute of Technology professor Dr. Sundaresan Jayaraman who coined his invention “Smart Shirt.” His vision was to add computing technology into a shirt that could measure one’s vital signs and become an interface between a patient and doctor. This early 1990s vision was ahead of its time, and it is seen today used in the form of remote health monitoring applications. However, in this case — in the world of textile electronics, or textiles that have electronic features — the clothing acts more like an electronic device rather than just a piece of clothing. Research performed at NC State and the ASSIST engineering research center deals with making clothing Smart and integrating sensors in a way that’s comfortable for the wearer. For example, the team has demonstrated a garment for monitoring electrocardiogram (ECG) for health analysis that is powered by a wearer’s body heat.

Where Are Smart Clothes?

The NC State research team found out about a program called NSF Innovation-Corps (I-Corps™), which is part start-up accelerator and part start-up boot camp. The NSF reports that the program “prepares scientists and engineers to extend their FOCUS beyond the university laboratory and accelerates the economic and societal benefits of NSF-funded, basic research projects that are ready to move toward commercialization.” Its mission is to teach entrepreneurship to scientists using the scientific method of entrepreneurship called the “Lean Start-Up Methodology” started by Steve Blank. It’s a sharp-shooting, intense, and Hyper-focused crash course in whether a scientific invention has any value to the greater marketplace that comes with guidance from established entrepreneurs.

Because its their area of study, the NC State research team was naturally interested in Smart clothing with the capability to measure a person’s vital signs; however, they always questioned who would use these garments and why, and if they would be treated like regular clothing? These questions kept spinning in the team’s minds, and as they got into the NSF I-Corps Fall 2016 cohort in Los Angeles, they finally had a chance to pursue those questions and learn all about the Lean Start-up Methodology.

The team arrived at the boot camp with a modernized version of the business plan known as the “Business Model Canvas.” The business model canvas was filled out with the first initial market and the hypothesis the team was looking to test. The team presented “Corporate Wellness” as their first market and shared their assumptions on stage at the boot camp, then split up to conduct interviews with the large companies, the California Department of Transportation and health care providers. After extensive qualitative interviews, the team discovered that corporate wellness was a saturated market.

The team dived deeper into identifying who exactly would use the technology and interviewed actual consumers. They went to strip malls and popular sporting goods stores like Lululemon and Dick’s Sporting Goods and interviewed consumers about wearable technology and whether they’d buy Smart shirts that were more accurate than a Fitbit and Apple Watch. Most of the interviewed consumers were millennials but still didn’t care much about the technology of Smart clothing.

After a day of interviews, in addition to learning that the corporate wellness market was saturated, the research team also discovered that consumers thought wearables were “nice to have”, but didn’t care too much about fancy Smart shirts when a Fitbit was “good enough.” Good enough sometimes is the best solution, and the team learned the hard way that no matter how great the technology is, if no one wants it you don’t have a real business. It was a good lesson.

Pivots, Pivots, Pivots

The team shifted FOCUS. One of the key interviews conducted during the Los Angeles journey was with law enforcement officers. The researchers found that if there was a way to track stress during law enforcement training and allow new officers to understand when stress is increasing, the officers can learn to manage the stress and prevent adverse outcomes from occurring. Managing stress in this way can save the law enforcement agency money and operational burdens, as well as increase the well-being of the officers and citizens. It sounded like a win-win for everyone. The team decided law enforcement would be its “beachhead market” — a market that’s currently underserved and would be open to a technology launch.

As the team continued its customer discovery in the market of law enforcement, it found that buying cycles, budgets, and the total addressable market wouldn’t make for a sustainable business. In addition, the most critical thing learned was that the unit economics — or the amount of money that can be earned from the lifetime of a customer to the amount it takes to acquire and sustain that customer — did not make sense. The fundamental reason for this is that the technology for Smart clothing and the greater Smart clothing market wasn’t making much profit. It is a small niche market and manufacturers who are able to make these textile electronic devices didn’t have the automation to lower the costs. To put things into perspective, the researchers found that the cost of a Smart shirt produced in Asia was 60 and took around 3 hours using a skilled team of 20 people. This was a shocking discovery for the team, and a bit humbling at the same time. The reality is that most Smart garments were made using conductive yarns to embroider and stitch, which at the time was a process utilizing little to no automation. In an industry where labor is a large component of the product manufacturing, the addition of complex electronic features adds a layer of complexity that the industry is not accustomed to. The NC State team found when diving deep into the Smart fabric supply chain that there’s an inherent need for automation to produce these next generation pieces of Smart clothing. This was not a pivot just for the business case, this was a pivot for the team’s technology. The researchers learned that they should instead go back to the lab and work on the technology to enable the proper unit economics that wearables and Smart clothing in general will fit into.

The Path Forward

As wearables become a fact of digital and personalized health, it’s only a matter of time until clothing becomes part of the value chain of healthcare. The clothing companies of the future will integrate more and more technology into their products and provide additional value to their consumers. This transformation will usher in a new functionality for fashion and clothing. Imagine a world where clothing is a point of care for health. To make that vision a reality requires researchers to solve the technological problems to enable use-cases with unit economics that can create sustainable new ventures.

Editor’s Note: Dr. Raj Bhakta is a recent Ph.D. graduate from NC State’s College of Textiles and the ASSIST self-powered wearables research center, whose research was focused on Smart textiles manufacturing and next-generation wearable technologies. He is the cofounder and CEO of Funxion, an early-stage start-up company working to create Smart fabric products all the way from “Atoms-to-Apparel.” Dr. Jesse Jur is an NC State Wilson College of Textiles associate professor of Textile Engineering, Chemistry and Science; Thrust Leader in Wearability Data at the ASSIST self-powered wearables research center; and principle investigator of the NEXT Research Group. He’s actively involved in the commercialization of technologies as well as innovation within the greater sphere of Smart fabrics. To learn more, visit next.textiles.ncsu.edu; or follow the group on Instagram @ncstate_nextresearch.

Sources:

https://www.easytechjunkie.com/what-is-Smart-clothing.htm
https://www.revespcardiol.org/en-Smart-clothes-take-care-people-articulo-S1885585715001802
https://www.imnovation-hub.com/science-and-technology/Smart-wireless-clothes/
https://www.textileworld.com/textile-world/features/2019/03/where-are-the-Smart-clothes/