Technical Report on

Smart Fabrics & Textile Seminar Omar Elshal

Computer Science and Engineering

German University in Cairo

omar.elshal@student.guc.edu.eg

Abstract Wearable Computing field is flourishing larger every day and within it emerged

many fields that are growing rapidly with new possibilities and technologies. And

while many research wearable computers are implemented nowadays on the body,

but people would definitely prefer to wear smart fabrics or garments instead of

having wires and sensors in plastics against their body. As smart fabrics field

matures and develops, the chances are big to turn the current research results into

commercial opportunities, as this field of wearable computing is being designed to

meet new and innovative applications in the military, public safety, healthcare,

space exploration, sports, and consumer fitness fields. This paper examines the

current state of the arts and research results in this massive field. And the previous

related work before them and finally a discussion and conclusion on these state of

the arts and researches and future work that might emerge from them.

1. Introduction

The field of smart fabrics and garments is very promising as clothing is one of the three

basic human needs since the beginning of the human civilization. And as generations pass,

the clothing becomes more useful and important until it became the heart of fashion and it

even determined every generation or a certain era. Thus the technological advances in our

current world that made everything around us smart urge us to innovate and make smart

fabrics which contain electronic circuits and also have data, power and touch sensing and

above all these smart fabrics would be comfortable and safe. That’s why these circuits use

passive components sewn from conductive yarns along with other normal components, to

create interactive electronic systems inside your textile.

Many years before, we could only see smart fabrics or clothing which contains smart

electronic circuits portrayed only in sci-fi movies. And from there came the inspiration to

make it real, but there were and still many issues that faced the engineers and designers of

smart fabrics industry. To shed the light on these problems, some of the first efforts can be

investigated. At MIT started one of the promising projects in the smart fabrics field, it

consisted of conductive metallic organza integrated into fabric to create interactive textile.

The first interactive fabric was a row and column based musical keyboard. The resulting

device was flexible enough to be folded and was capable of emitting the appropriate

keyboard notes via external speakers. The microcontroller for the keyboard used was

programmed to generate Musical Instrument Digital Interface control data, allowing

players to easily trigger different notes on the attached synthesizer. Unfortunately, this

keyboard did not measure pressure information which is crucial for expressive control in

music. For all these drawbacks, however, users found it quite satisfying to make music by

crushing and pressing this keyboard.

The previous interactive smart textiles used integrated wiring and carrying devices that add

weight to the clothing making them uncomfortable and hardly practical for daily use. Also,

these textiles are quite expensive and still have issues related to flexibility and safety.

From the figure below [4], Smart fabrics is predicted to be growing, although not like other

fields’ progress. But the growth is constantly increasing each year which paves the way for

more products in this field to see the light and not to mention also that the highest growing

field, Healthcare can be integrated perfectly with smart fabrics.

The rest of this technical report paper covers the following:

A related work in section 2 to discuss the problems of smart textile more deeply.

Implementation done in section 3 which discuss the current state of the arts that is

provided to solve the previous problems mentioned.

Discussion which contains an evaluation of the mentioned state of the art solutions

which is section 4.

Final conclusion and future work in section 5 which summarizes and highlights

what have been discussed and what can be achieved in the near future.

2. Related Work

While protection and usability were the two common dimensions typically associated with

textiles as clothing. However, due to the rapid technological advances in our life, a third

dimension is rising that of ‘intelligence’ which is being integrated into fabrics to produce

interactive textiles [3]. Eventually, the real challenge is in combining novel and advanced

technology along with a sense for fashion and usability to satisfy user needs.

The general issues of smart fabrics field are no different than the main issues of the

wearable computing industry unless specific requirements specified due to the nature of

each item. The main challenges are Size, Cost and Power.

The technology of smart textiles can be integrated in almost all existing fields that revolves

around our life like:

Biomedical field (e.g. manufacture of smart sutures, tissues)

Military field (e.g. uniforms which can detect chemical threats in a battlefield)

Sports (e.g. fabrics which can make athletes feel comfortable)

Fashion and entertainment (e.g. fabrics which can change color interactively)

Comfort wears (e.g. fabrics which can maintain body temperature)

Space (e.g. special spacesuits designed for astronauts).

Smart textiles have a lot of other applications beside the mentioned above, but before we

discuss the latest state of the arts let us mention first the previous proposed smart textile

applications and discuss their drawbacks and issues they have and might share.

Row and column fabric keyboard [5]:

This keyboard (Figure 1) is a textile switch matrix sewn from conducting and non-

conducting fabric. It consists of two layers of highly conductive metallic organza with a

resistance of approximately 10 V/m and non-conducting rows separated by an insulating

layer of tulle. The microcontroller of the keyboard was programmed to generate standard

MIDI control data, allowing players to trigger various notes on an attached synthesizer.

Unfortunately, the keyboard lacks the ability to measure pressure information which is

crucial to explicitly control musical pitches, as there was no nonlinear element present at

the switching intersections resulting in false contacts observed by the microcontroller when

many keys were pressed at the same time. Eventually, the piecework nature of the keyboard

required more manual work than was hoped for.

Figure 1 - Row/column fabric keyboard

E-textile construction Kit [5]:

Construction kits provide simple modules, construction kit pieces, which can be combined

in many ways to provide several functionalities. As in figure 2, the construction kit consists

of a microcontroller, an assortment of sensors and actuators, and infrared transceiver, an

on/off button and a battery pack. It can be noticed from the figure below that the

components are either made entirely from textile or has been packaged to be stitched to

clothes. But unfortunately this kit lacks the luxury of being comfortable and more user

friendly as we discover the applications of it.

Figure 2- E-textile Construction Kit

The different components of the kit provide a variety of applications like communication

shirts (figure-3) which are shirts that can communicate with one another wirelessly via IR.

The shirts contains RGB LED, a vibrating motor in a wooden bead and one IR transceiver.

Another application of the kit is temperature sensing hat (figure-4), it consists of a

microcontroller, temperature sensor, RGB LED and on/off switch and battery. From figure

4 below the RGB LED is only thing outside the hat to show the difference in temperature.

As the temperature increases, the light gets redder.

Figure 3- Communication Shirt

Figure 4- Temperature sensing hat

In 2012, a number of EU funded projects resulted in numerous prototypes for smart

textile PPE garments. Safe@Sea (completed 2012) developed advanced personal

protective suit for fishing. Sensors were integrated into protective outer garments to

detect falling overboard in a fully waterproof smart fabric garment. The project was quite

fascinating except it lacked being comfortable a little bit, but it made huge step towards

the smart e-textiles in this field [7].

Figure 5 – Safe@Sea project

3. Implementation

The term ‘textronics’ refers to interconnected approaches in the process of producing and

designing smart fabrics materials, which began on 2001. The latest state of the arts depend

on this technology. From figure-6 below, one can notice that the process of manufacturing

textronics has a synergic connection between textiles industry, electronics and embedded

computers [6].

Textronic products must satisfy the following features:

Flexibility: being easy to modify the construction at design stage.

Intelligence: possible to get automatic change in properties due to external factors.

Multifunctional: meaning facility of having different functions by one product

Figure 6 - Textronic

In this section, the latest state of the arts and research approaches are going to be discussed

thoroughly. These approaches tries to solve the problems and challenges of the previous

works and elaborate new ideas instead of the old ones.

Biomedical: 1st Approach: Clothing+ [5]

One of the most promising smart textile applications is healthcare and biomedical field as

we saw from figure-1. Medical heart rate sensor, mounted on a textile conductive strap

which is developed by Clothing+ in Finland. The first version of the textile was done in

cooperation with Polar Elektro and they plan for mass production in china supplying

Adidas, Garmin, Philips and Timex. Currently they manufacture more than 3 million belts

each year, which is half of the total global heart rate monitor market. The device consists

of a microcontroller for data analysis and heart rate sensor which measures acceleration,

heart rate, speed and distance.

Figure 7- Clothing+, Adidas belt

2nd Approach: Textile-based drug-delivery systems [1]

A relatively new category of smart medical textiles is lubricating drug-delivery dressing.

Sometimes, transdermal drug delivery can be a good alternative to traditional pills and

medications when it is crucial to reduce the effect on stomach and intestinal tract and also

in the cases when it’s difficult to get oral administrations. The integration of textile and

biotechnology along with chemistry can offer numerous scenarios for drug delivery system

development. The approach is quite creative and still relatively new as its prototype was

released in late 2013.

Figure 8 - drug delivery dressing

Space

3rd Approach: Smart Sock [7]

Smart sock is able to monitor the efficacy of astronaut training exercises in the

space in order to help to reduce muscle degeneration experienced during loss of

gravity in space. The sock consists of built-in sensors that record the electrical

activity of muscle (EMG) and light to detect oxygen content in and around the

muscle (NIRS). ESA (European Space Agency) contracted Ohmatex for

development and the first prototype was completed in October 2012.

Figure 9 - Smart sock

4th Approach: Astroskin (Smart T-shirt) [7]

Astroskin is a T-shirt which is able to monitor astronaut’s vital signs in real

time then it transmits the data wirelessly to the medical teams on Earth, who in

turn can interpret the data to evaluate how a crew is corresponding to their tasks

and environment. It has been developed by Carré Technologies, featuring their

Hexoskin technology. The results of current experiments in Antarctica will be

shared with the Canadian Space Agency for possible use on future space

missions.

Military 5th Approach: Auxetic Materials for military uniform [6]

According to a study by Grand View Research Inc. in 2013, Protection and military

accounted for 27% of the overall market share of smart fabrics & textiles in 2012, and is

expected to continue sharing the largest segment in the next 6 years. The Auxetic material

have the ability of becoming wider when they are stretched and narrower when they are

compressed, in other words, they have a negative Poisson’s ratio. These materials have

other useful properties including high fracture toughness, resistance and energy absorption.

Therefore they have great potentials in various fields such as bulletproof vests or helmets

besides of course being integrated in smart fabrics field and when all of these are combined

together, it would serve perfectly well in military uniform manufacturing (figure 10).

Figure 10 - smart military uniform

4. Discussion & Evaluation

In this discussion, we are going to discuss the results and statistics obtained from using the

previously mentioned approaches.

The mentioned smart textiles for health for healthcare ensured patient’s mobility, safety

and comfort. Applications of smart textiles for medicine and healthcare vary from the

surgical applications of single yarns to complex wearable and axillary systems for

personalized healthcare. Unfortunately, there is still no classification smart textile for these

applications, but initially those can be described referring to commonly distinguished

groups in normal medical textiles.

Due to new functions, several new categories must be highlighted such as, textile drug-

release systems, active textiles for therapy and textiles with biometric performance.

Moreover, smart materials find applications in hospital textiles and clothing for medical

personal. For the type that requires specific application, most solutions are bought by

functional textiles. For example, hospital textiles contain usually antimicrobial and

antibacterial properties or low friction coating.

It can be noticed that conductive textile materials are more often used in manufacturing of

heating textiles that find applications in blankets for operating rooms. First most known

attempts in textile sensor development were reported nearly a decade ago by Georgia Tech

under the name of ‘Wearable Motherboards’.

According to a study conducted in the UK (2008-2010) to explore the impact of adopting

telehealth. The results published at the end of 2011, reported a 15% reduction in A&E visits,

14% reduction in bed days of the patients examined and 20% reduction in emergency

admission. As a result of the previous statistics, the NHS started an imitative in 2012

aiming that by 2017, telehealth care would be provided to 3 million people with long term

health conditions as described in figure 11.

Figure 11 - Global forecast of telehealth

Although most of the discussed approaches related to military or space are under

construction and are still manufactured as prototypes, they have overridden many

challenges of the old researches making them quite reliable and affordable. The Canadian

space agency is going to implement the Astroskin project in their future space missions

after they receive the results conducted by researchers at the University of Quebec.

For the military field, the UK military is developing a light weight military uniform with a

reduction in battery and cable weight made from a conductive fabric integrated to the

uniform which contains shirt, helmet, backpack, gloves and weapons platform. The Centre

for Defense Enterprise (CDE) has awarded £234,000 to Intelligent Textiles for finding

smart textile solutions for reducing the weight load for soldiers. Intelligent Textiles is also

working with BAE systems to integrate other equipment into the military uniform which

is expected to be available by 2015.

5. Conclusions and Future Work

The smart fabrics and textiles field is still at an early stage of development with many new

innovations in the pipeline which is going to change the way we look at textiles nowadays.

Researcher in this field may think at first that this field is still has poor development and

not thoroughly investigated. But with the mentioned approaches previously along with

hundreds of other running research projects on the smart textiles field, it is unfair to say

that it is a poorly developed field.

The development process is quite promising and many of the mentioned approaches have

solved many challenges and will be providing the novice user with a comfortable, secure

and safe smart fabrics. After the synthetic fibers manufacturing, it is expected that smart

fabrics will revolutionize the textile industry.

On the manufacturing side, the textile industry in the past decade or so, has changed

dramatically due to more attention on smart textiles. The western world today focuses

extensively on research and applications of smart textiles compared to the classical

ordinary clothing sectors. In the next twenty years; the smart fiber sector is expected to

scale astronomical heights so much so that they would become indispensable to human

beings.

On the commercial side, however, these textiles are still to realize aspirations of potential

buyers who would like to have the product at reasonable prices. But that is quite natural

since any new technology takes its own time to get fully commercialized. And the smart

textile industry is hardly a decade old. It can be anticipated that this industry will have a

huge market of its own, and the market will not be made entirely of the affluent class; in

fact majority of consumers would be from the middle class world over. Instead of cutting

prices all the time, the textile industry should focus on delivering customized products with

enhanced functionality features like say, smartness. The future does not lie in cutting costs

all the time, but in being innovative at every process of product design.

For the future work, present researches in smart textiles focuses on the following areas:

Fiber optics.

Intelligent coating/ membrane.

Photo sensitive materials.

Neural network and control systems.

Tissue engineering.

Thermally sensitive materials.

Chemical/ drug release, and many more.

Considering the current trends, the worldwide textile industry is over 50 million metric

tons per year, and if smart textiles can capture only a measly 1%, it still means that this

industry worth more than 1 billion euros. The intelligent textile sector represents the 21st

century of fibers and fabrics industry. The smart textile industry is poised to revolutionize

the world textile sector in the coming few years. Eventually, the field has great promises

in the near future that its products will make inroads to the novice user sooner than we

think.

Appendix

Table of figures:

Figure 1 - Row/column fabric keyboard ......................................................... 3

Figure 2- E-textile Construction Kit ............................................................... 4

Figure 3- Communication Shirt ...................................................................... 4

Figure 4- Temperature sensing hat ................................................................. 4

Figure 5 – Safe@Sea project .......................................................................... 5

Figure 6 - Textronic ........................................................................................ 5

Figure 7- Clothing+, Adidas belt .................................................................... 6

Figure 8 - drug delivery dressing .................................................................... 6

Figure 9 - Smart sock ...................................................................................... 7

Figure 10 - smart military uniform ................................................................. 8

Figure 11 - Global forecast of telehealth ........................................................ 9

References

Additional Papers:

[1] Mecnika, V., et al. "Smart textiles for healthcare: applications and technologies." Rural Environment. Education. Personality.(REEP). Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference (Latvia). 2014. [2] Köhler, Andreas R. "Challenges for eco-design of emerging technologies: The case of electronic textiles." Materials & Design 51 (2013): 51-60. [3] Sungmee Park and Sundaresan Jayaraman (2003). Smart Textiles: Wearable Electronic Systems. MRS Bulletin, 28, pp 585-591. doi:10.1557/mrs2003.170. [4] Florian Schumacher (2014), Wearable Technologies News Roundup - January.

Common Papers:

[5] Ruchi Kholiya & Dr. Shahnaz Jahan , Beginning of a new era with Electronic Textiles. [6] Nitin Ajmera, Satya Priya Dash, Chet Ram Meena, Smart Textile. [7] Christian Dalsgaard and Rachael Sterrett. (2014), White paper on smart textile garments and devices: a market overview of smart textile wearable technologies