Smart Fabric

MIT scientist Yoel Fink has been at the cutting edge of smart textile technology for more than a decade and has just made a significant breakthrough, demonstrating the first ever digital fabric-fiber that can store and process information.

It can be frustrating, when the jacket that you initially put on to keep you warm starts making you too hot. Jackets made from an experimental new reversible fabric, however, could both heat and cool their wearer.

Clothing might one day do more than keep us warm, and scientists have offered a compelling new example of what might be possible by developing a new thread made of conductive cellulose, which can be worked into textiles that generate electricity.

When it comes to renewable energy, many cities combine multiple sources, such as solar panels and wind turbines. Scientists have now taken a similar approach with a "smart" shirt that generates electricity via both sweat and movement.

When producing "smart fabrics" made of conductive fibers, it can be difficult placing functional elements such as electrodes in specific locations along those fibers. A new polymer, however, could make doing so much easier.

In order to monitor their wearers' movements, smart fabrics typically incorporate strain-measuring sensors. And while such sensors are often impractically fragile, Harvard University scientists have created a new one that can really take a beating.

Imagine if your tablecloth could alert you to the whereabouts of misplaced items, or track your diet? Those things and more may soon be possible, thanks to a new "smart" fabric being developed at New Hampshire's Dartmouth College.

If a 3D printer leaves gaps in the plastic that it deposits, it's usually thought of as an unwanted flaw. Now, however, the process has been harnessed to quickly and cheaply produce pliable polymer textiles.

A Yale team has developed a new “robotic fabric” that can change its shape and stiffness on demand or by sensing its environment. The material could one day be used in high-tech clothing, tents that set themselves up, or robotic parachutes.

When it comes to tracking an athlete's performance, a single wearable sensor doesn't always provide much information, yet multiple hard-wired sensors restrict movement. That's a where a new sensor suit comes in – and it's powered by a smartphone.

There are now several experimental "smart fabrics," capable of detecting the wearer's respiration or heartbeat via deformations in the material. A new one is claimed to work better, by utilizing transmission lines instead of individual sensors.

Although we've recently seen numerous "electronic skin" sensor patches that monitor the wearer's vital signs, the things do have their drawbacks. Scientists at MIT have therefore developed an alternative, in the form of a vitals-monitoring shirt.