Electronic Textiles and its applications

by Hafsa Riaz,BSc(NCTE) ,MSc (UET)National Textile University, Faisalabad.

Due fast development in textile and clothing industry, the traditional ideas about clothes will be radically changed, as new area of textile products called Smart clothes are gaining importance. The intelligent textiles and smart clothing industry is focused on enhancing the functional properties of textiles. Smart materials can be defined as those, which react to external environment or stimuli. God has gifted all living creatures to react /response to external environment. There can be variety of environmental conditions like temperature variation, light intensity variation, etc. Man is also trying to develop these kinds of material from last decade, which can sense and react to stimuli. Stimuli can be broadly classified into two main groups, i.e, Electrical based stimuli and chemical based stimuli. Smart materials can be those which can only sense stimuli or sense and reaction stimuli or highly intelligent material which can sense, react and adopt according to that stimuli like Phase change material (PCM) which change phases from solid to liquid and back according to temperature range is one of the example of chemical based stimuli. Scientists in their garments at the South Pole use such materials at present, where the temperature is below zero, to carry out their research work.

The research on smart clothing is mainly directed to enhance functioning of textile products for traditional and new applications. Traditional textile applications are for protective, sports and fashion garments, while new application areas are healthcare, entertainment, communication and life management. The world “smart” combines the meaning of knowhow, chic, and elegance. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of latest development in the field of application of smart technology, i.e Electronics textiles (E-textiles).

This paper also tells about future prospects of variouss application, such as integration of textiles and computers by designing and producing smart textiles that can sense and react.

Related applications

Electronic textiles have numerous applications and opportunities.   These types of textiles and clothing offer more than just protection against weather, in this information age they serve as versatile mobile communication medium. The clothes made from smart textile can be used for direction finding, location finding, warning and other information. Smart clothing can be used for finding wearers, sending out emergency signals, if the wearer is buried under an avalanche, for instance, or reading the wearer’s pulse rate, heart activity, and other body functions from sensors. Smart clothes can be used to monitor the physical loads on the body during sports. They can be used to spot the first signs of exhaustion or deficiency while the user was jogging, hiking or cycling and ask the doctor for appropriate diagnosis by e-mail.

Wearable technology, the electronics-based approach, started to add totally new features to clothing by attaching various kinds of electronic devices to garments.  Electronic textiles is different from wearable computers, for example wearable, but non textile computer application is headset mounting display. Historical research reveals that first wearable computer was designed to predict outcomes of the casino gambling game roulette in 1955. This wearable system was a cigarette-pack sized analogue computer with four push buttons .At that time concept of textile based computing was not available and at times those wearable computers, were often bulky, not very user friendly and impractical   for daily use.

In electronic textiles, electronic devices are integrated with textile products with exchangeable information modules. This merging of electronics and textiles is indeed very exciting field. The computerized jogging shoe no. 1 by Adidas is one such example. Interactive Photonic Textiles by Philips may bring a few more around.

 In the healthcare sector the comfort of patients and efficiency of the medical personnel can be improved with Electronic textiles. The incorporation of interfaces and sensors into clothes is a highly attractive option for medical and monitoring applications, as it facilitates the automatic sensitization of the activity. If sensors are included in the garments, wearing the garments equals to sensibility. This is superior to other approaches to E-health. Also, the user often rejects wearable medical devices as they highlight the existence of pathologies or medical problems. If the devices are integrated in clothing this problem disappears.

Researches on medical monitoring systems are very fast. . For many of the health problems, early systematic intervention and long –term monitoring would be highly beneficial. In fact, the possibilities of unobtrusive long-term monitoring from smart textiles could benefit, among others, patients with spinal cord injuries, the cognitively impaired, elderly people living at home and infants at risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. (SIDS)

Life Shirt.

LifeShirt® is a continuous, integrated and wearable remote patient monitoring system, enables healthcare professionals and researchers to accurately monitor more than 30 vital life-sign functions in the real-world settings where patients live and work. A comfortable and completely non-invasive “smart garment”, LifeShirt® gathers data during a patient’s daily routine- both awake and asleep- providing the most complete remote picture of a patient’s health status available today.

Wearable vital sign is one of the focused fields in research application of electronic textiles.

Blue -tooth Jacket.

The WEALTHY (Wearable health monitoring system) in which heart rate sensors are attached to a sports shirt has been commercially in use, is an example of wearable vital sign. This was a EU funded project assigned to different companies of different fields. A small portable electronic device weighs less than 250 gm, and can fit in a pocket of the garment. The WEALTHY central monitoring system represents the data in graphical form.

For unexpected death of young baby (SIDS) due to breathing failure “Mamagoose SIIDS Monitor” is commercially available. It consists of pyjamas with built-in sensors and an electronic signal processing and data collection unit. If a problem is detected, the pyjamas sounds an alarm to help stave off SIDS. A similar kind of product is developed in USA by VivoMetric® with brand name of Life Shirt®. It consists of sensors, data processing and data storage integrated in to the textile vest. It measures ECG (heart rate) and record posture and activity level.

Smart shirt developed by Sensatex is another application of electronic textiles .It measures and monitors individual biometric data such as heart rate, respiration rate, body temperature and caloric burn and provides readout in wristwatch or PDA (Personal digital assistance). Bed sensors are another application of electronic textiles. They are used to measure patient’s motion and agitation and they measure it in completely unobtrusive manner. The sensor Kinotex® is fabricated in foam material.

Back pain is often caused by monotonic body postures or high stress. As prevention of back pain is better than therapy, therefore, the conceptual idea of personal wearable Back Manager is already streamlined. It has sensors, which detect body movements and posture to give indications of high stress area. Wearable Heart Manager is another example of electronic textiles in which sensors are embedded in clothes, with an aim is to reduce cardio-vascular diseases.

Garment with Portable Phone.

Consumer’s products are another research area for electronic textiles. The electronic textiles can be used for both communication and entertainment purposes. Clothing integrated with audio player and portable phone has been commercialized. So wearer can communicate with each other, applications include workwear clothing for dangerous work environments, such as fire fighting and rescue services,  construction, mining and fishing, etc.

The need for continuous communication and access to information has led to the development of the Mp3 and Bluetooth enabled jacket that have connected us to an electronic world of data. Philips with the cooperation of Levi Strauss have commercialized Life Style jackets. These Jackets are waterproof and feature electrical components (a phone, MP3 player, unified controller, microphone and headphones).

For safety purposes, textile integrated with sensors devices like Global Positioning Systems (GPS) can detect a user’s exact location anytime in any weather.  These types of clothes can be used for safety of fighters, policemen and military personal in case of any emergency. Wearable technology for snow clothing was also in last stage. A snow mobile is a vehicle used for work and leisure in harsh winter conditions. The people in snow mobile may need help in case of any accident. So several sensors are used in the garment to monitor the body function and position of wearer.

Fiber keyboard.

Electronic textiles have vast uses in military. In today’s modern helmet, the soldier can get up to date information via a helmet mounted global positioning system (GPS), a small, wireless voice and data communication system, and a wearable computer linked to an intra-squad wireless local area network (LAN). A Fiber keyboard is another example of military use .The soldier could communicate with others either by a fabric keyboard that might be unrolled from the pocket of a military uniform, or simply sewn or woven in as part of the military uniform's sleeve so as to reduce load from soldier’s carriage.

Future perspectives

A new generation of fabrics, called, as “E textiles” will open up numerous possibilities in future. Presently, electronic textiles are still in developing stage but it has shown great potential in terms of application areas. Future warrior systems would be equipped with head-up display, wireless weapons, global positioning systems, chemical and biological threat detectors, battery power, personal physiological status sensors, combat ID sensors, all linked up to the combat soldier's personal computer to assist him with situational awareness and understanding. There are no doubts that electronic textiles have great potential for health care, entertainment, sportswear and communication.

References 

1. Wearable technology for snow clothing by Heikki Mattila.
2. Zafar Javed, PTJ  January 2007.
3. Intelligent Textiles and clothing by Heikki Mattila.
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7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki /Wearable_computer.
8. http://wealthy-ist.com/index.php
9. http://foxnews.webmd.com
10. http://www.vivometrics.com
11. http://www.sensatex.com
12. http://www.tactex.com
13. Philips Research Laboratories 2001.