Archive for the 'Articles' Category

The recently published ‘Keyboard Jeans‘ by designer Erik De Nijs on Yanko Design is adding a new twist to the Interactive Fashion trend which is slowly but steady growing.

Sure, the ‘Keyboard Jeans’ are easily labeled as ‘Geeky’ and ‘Nerdy’ pushing form far beyond function but is this not the case with many Haute Couture designs in the fashion world?

Only when designer go beyond the limits progress in fashion (and anywhere else) will be made. Without people challenging the set limits means no progress in life, technology and fashion.

Haute Couture fashion designer like Christian Dior, Giorgio Armani, Versace and Yves Saint Laurent are experimenting and pushing the fashion limits in every new collection by presenting iconic models that will not make it to the shops but explore new techniques and materials which eventually will become our new fashion trend one day.

Haute Tech Fashion will follow a similar path to make progress and become part of future ‘ready to wear’ collections. The first name of a growing list of Haute Tech fashion designer, Hussein Chalayan is adding to his fashion shows Wearable Electronic inspired models to explore the value technology can add to fashion, emotion, aesthetics and style.

Back to the design concept of the ‘Keyboard Jeans’: having the complete multimedia system integrated in jeans might never be something that people will buy but it is demonstrating how jeans would look when having this type of interactivity.

Taking existing technologies like Fibretronic’s wearable remote control or ElekTex fabric keypad technology, some sensible and practical interactive functions in jeans would be possible for the ready-to-wear market.

Point in case is Levi’s RedWire DLX Jeans first launched in 2006. The ReWire DLX was only available a short time and the integration of the keypad was not the best of what design could do (technically and aesthetically) but it was a first step into exploring the possibility clothing could offer on interactivity with our every shrinking electronic devices.

Our clothing gives plenty of space for convenient, fun and stylish looking interaction with our micro and nano devices.

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Interactive Textiles are not limited to control the iPod or other electronic devices but could also be useful for body-mapping garments as a project by Australians CSIRO Textile and Fibre Technology demonstrates.

The idea is as following: to help basketball players to find their ideal shot-making rhythm and motion the system plays a series of beats in-sync with their arm and wrist movements as they take a shot.

The beats are triggered as the limbs move through certain positions. If the motion is ‘correct’ the beats will sound like parts of a disco drum rhythm indicating the ‘best’ movement to net the ball.

If the rhythm doesn’t make sense the player knows something went wrong and the ball will end off the target.

I am not sure if this interactive textile sleeve will be of any help during a game as the press release from CSIRO states but for training purpose it might make sense.

The potential of the wearable body mapping sleeve goes beyond basketball players, it will find use in other sport applications as well as in areas like entertainment, education, military, rehabilitation and medicine according Dr Richard Helmer, Technology scientist at CSIRO Textile and Fibre Division.

I would say a promising start into body mapping garments. Let’s keep an eye on the further development of this concept and see which area will first benefit from a body mapping garment.

[source: CSIRO via Dvice]

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Looking forward to long days with lot of sunshine made me check out what’s up in the research kitchen regarding wearable solar technology, speak flexible and hopefully lower cost solar panels.

My most promising find: Konarka, one of the hot favorites in the field of wearable solar power working on Power Plastic® that converts light to energy. This simple yet powerful mission of Konarka moved them to the forefront not only in research and development but very close to actual manufacturing of the first Power Plastic® materials.

The advantages of Power Plastic® will be: inexpensive, lightweight and flexible - just the stuff needed to be build power into Wearable Electronic products enabling them to have their own low cost embedded sources of renewable energy.

In a recent press release Konarka announced a first-ever demonstration of Inkjet Printed Solar Cells.

‘Demonstrating the use of Inkjet printing technology as a fabrication tool for highly efficient solar cells and sensors with small area requirements is a major milestone,’ commented Rick Hess, president and CEO at Konarka.

How does it work? Inkjet printing is a commonly used technique for controlled deposition of solutions of functional materials in specific locations on a substrate and can provide easy and fast deposition of polymer films over a large area. That’s scientist language explaining the function of an good old Inkjet printer I am sure most of our reader know and have connected to the computer.

This demonstration from Konarka confirms that organic solar cells can be processed with printing technologies with little or no loss compared to ‘clean room’ semiconductor technologies such as spin coating.

The advantage of this solar cell printing technology is the simpler and cheaper manufacturing setup required and the possibility to print solar cells on different materials like plastic and potentially on fabrics.

It is not expected to create high power solar cells in this way but powerful enough to collect light supplying products like sensors that have lower power requirements.

When will Power Plastic® become available for use? No clear signal yet out of Konarka but this will also depend on how ‘hot’ the interest from the market will be to use the Power Plastic® in commercial products.

If the solar bag trend that started last year continuous or becomes even hotter = bigger this year, Power Plastic® might be put on the fast track to commercialization.

Wherever there is light there will be (soon) power in your clothing and bags.

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For a seamless integration of electronic into clothing solutions have to be found that conform with the surrounding material, in the case of Wearable Electronic this means with textiles.

Most textiles are stretchable, at least to a certain extend. If the textiles would not stretch the wearing comfort would be very limited. The clothing will not follow our bodies movement and look stiff if not limiting our movement at all.

Bendable electronics can be found as commercial products but they represent only a first step into the ‘right’ direction. Bendable electronic can follow curves like but do not follow properly the movement of clothing which requires often a certain degree of stretching of the material.

A recently published work by a group of Scientist at the University of Illinois promises flexible silicon and plastic circuits that can potentially be used for integration into clothing. This technology might open the doors for new Wearable Electronic (and other) applications that have not been possible without it.

Making electronic substrates thin makes it bendable, just as a piece of paper is bendable whereas a piece of wood is not,” says John Rogers who is heading the team.

To make elastic circuits, the team binds the silicon wiring to a thin sheet of rubbery plastic that has been stretched out to be approximately 15% wider and longer than it was before.

After applying the silicon circuit to the stretched material it is released and the rubber like material shrinks back to it’s original shape. The circuit forms a wave shape profile (see photo above).

According to the Scientists the performance of the circuit is completely unaffected by this process and in this way produced circuits can be stretched up to the 15%.

For a seamless integration of electronic into clothing it is essential that ‘conventional’ electronic needs to be bendable AND stretchable otherwise the integration would be to cumbersome and rejected by the wearer.

This new development will certainly enrich the ‘tool box’ of future Wearable Electronic Fashion designer and e-Textile engineers.

[source: NewScientist]

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The most visible use of Wearable Electronic technologies is in consumer products like clothing and bags. The value here is convenience, adding individuality or giving interactive decoration options.

But the potential of Wearable Electronic technologies go far beyond the fashion market. Take for example the health care and medical sector. Nobody likes to get sick or having health problems but this is a fact of our life.

Being in such situation puts already a great strain on a patients life quality. The need of measuring and monitoring body functions means being stationary or having the need to go the doctor or hospital for monitoring. Most of the time highly visible and uncomfortable devices has to be worn during the monitoring of body functions.

This might change soon as a newly formed consortium, comprising 18 research, academic, industrial and medical organizations from 9 different European countries and China, will work to improve the quality of life for coronary heart disease and heart failure patients.

The project name is ‘HeartCycle‘ and aims to create a ‘patient loop’ that gives patients continuous feedback on their state of health, their progress towards achieving health status milestones, plus motivational tips and suggestions for a healthy lifestyle and diet.

Monitoring each patient’s condition will be achieved using a combination of unobtrusive bio-sensors built into the patient’s clothing or bed sheet.

Sensing of an individual patient’s physical exertion, body orientation and ambient environment will provide additional information so that the system can put the monitoring data into context.

The HeartCycle project, for which Philips Research is acting as project coordinator, is one of the largest biomedical and health care research projects within the European Union (EU) and will run for four years.

More infos can be found on www.research.philips.com

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talk2myShirt is always looking ahead to check what might be the next big thing after Wearable Electronic. One emerging trend might be, after technology has conquered our clothing, to bring technology under the skin according to recent works from researchers and other forward thinking folks.

I have to admit this sounds a bit frightening especially for people like me that can not stand seeing a small cut on the finger but there are signs in form of concepts and first demonstrators that do just this, get technology under the skin.

One such example is the recent work of Jim Mielke’s for the Core77 ‘Greener Gadgets Design Competition‘. Her Digital Tattoo Interface is a display the size of 2×4 inch which also acts as a Bluetooth device made of thin, flexible silicon and silicone.

It is inserted through a small incision beneath the skin and muscle. Two small tubes on the device are attached to an artery and a vein to allow the blood to flow to a coin-sized blood fuel cell that converts glucose and oxygen to electricity.

If you are still with us, the operation is over and we can go on to the function description: the top surface of the display enables touch-screen control through the skin. Instead of ink, the display uses tiny microscopic spheres, similar to how e-Ink works. A field-sensitive material in the spheres changes their color from clear to black.

The tattoo display communicates wirelessly to other Bluetooth devices inside the body or outside the body with the Interactive Clothing for example.

The display can be turned on and off by pushing a small dot on the skin. When the phone rings the tattoo comes to life as a digital video of the caller. When the call ends, the tattoo disappears.

Maybe not something for the faint hearted but if you can get over the initial implantation stage you would have the coolest gadget ever made. It’s a concept for now but I am sure where there is a will there will be a way to make it - one day.

Another interesting, less bloody and almost ready for commercial launch is a technology that turns the surface of the human body (skin) itself into a means of data transmission.

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT) has already developed technology that allows swapping data as heavy as motion pictures through a handshake but this system has not been launched commercially.

What NTT want’s to commercialize (maybe as early as this spring) is a room-entry system that uses the data transmission capability of the human skin to replace keys once and forever.

I would say a very practical idea, never forgetting your keys anymore, just touch your lock with your finger. And yeah, never cut off your finger or just cut your finger otherwise you will be left out in the cold.

Some time ago a concept of changing business card data via handshake using skin data transmission was discussed as well but just how to get the data onto your skin seems is a challenge to be still mastered.

Using a finger touch to open a lock seems more feasible, maybe each human being radiates by nature (default) differently but - why not using the finger print reader then ….. it’s there, used in many areas from bank security to cell phones.

I do not mean to sound sarcastic, I fully support the imagination power of the human brain to figure out new things but before putting something into the market and expect returns we might spend as well some time and brainpower to check if a new technology does make sense in the every-day world where added-value, personal taste and cultural values come into the equotation.

Be it Skin Technology, Wearable Technology or any other product idea; only products that add value and make life easier will have success.

Source: Physorg.com

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I found a video clip on YouTube about the NavJacket O’Neill announced in December last year which shows how this display on the jacket sleeve will work.

If O’Neill is pulling this out of their sleeve later this year and offers the NavJacket for sale it might be one of the most expensive jackets but considering the advanced technology that has to go into it, it will be nevertheless a perfect buy for the early adopter among our readers.

So far, O’Neill has delivered what they announced and there is no reason they will not do that again this time.

To refresh your memory, the NavJacket has a flexible LED display integrated into the jacket sleeve which shows directional icons and arrows to direct skiers down the slopes. In addition, speakers in the hood provide the wearer with audio navigational instructions.

The NavJacket will also connect to your phone through which it can deliver 3D views of the resorts as well as points of interest around the resort.

The integration of flexible displays in clothing is still in its early stage and O’Neill will be the first brand to launch it in the consumer market.

Check out the video clip below taken by a YouTube member during the ispo winter 08 in Munich:

O’Neill created their own promotional video and a website for the NavJacket, follow this link and enjoy the viewing.

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Textronics Inc. the innovator and creator of the NuMetrex fitness apparel collection is giving the term ‘Smart Textiles’ and Heart rate monitoring for training, fitness and health care a complete new meaning.

Textronics has been recently awarded a patent for its textile-based electrode system by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.

The patent is for stretchy textile electrodes that can be incorporated into wearable garments to comfortably monitor the wearer’s heart rate, ECG or other electrical activity of the body.

Almost at the same time Textronics received the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance to market its textile-based ECG Electrode for use in general electrocardiograph monitoring and recording procedures.

That’s in layman’s term the confirmation of the almighty FDA that Textronics sweetly soft, stretchy and comfortable smart textile sensor is not just picking up some signals, it is a high quality and accurate sensor for ECG measurements.

The FDA approval opens the door for Textronics to enter with it’s textile electrode technology the health care market, where advances in technology enable people to monitor their biofeedback from the comfort of their own homes.

This recent announcements establish Textronics and its NuMetrex range of heart rate monitoring fitness apparel as the clear leader in this market.

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