Wearable Power, the seamless, unobtrusive integration of electrical power storage or generation into woven structures – speak fabrics – is a highly active area in wearable tech research and development.

A team of scientists at the Polytechnic School of Montreal, Canada led by Maksim Skorobogatiy has joined the race for wearable power with a highly promising technology that might be able to get a good electrical charge into our smart wardrobe sooner than many might have expected.

The team came up with a type of Li-Ion battery chemistry which is not based on the usual liquid electrolytes but made of solid thermoplastic sheets of lithium iron phosphate cathodes, lithium titanium anodes sandwiched between solid polyethylene oxide electrodes.

Strips cut from the sheet are woven into fabrics, integrating a electrical power storage capability into textiles. The battery strips have the consistency and feel of leather which can make it useful for certain types of fabrics to blend into them seamlessly.

One hurdle the team has still to work out is to make this battery thread/strip water proof so it can be used for fabrics exposed to the elements.

More details about this revolutionary wearable power development can be found under this link (pdf document).

The woven battery of Maksim Skorobogatiy’s team is the most exiting wearable power development I have seen for a long time because of two noticeable features: for one, it is not requiring liquids which are highly susceptible of leaking, especially when incorporated into soft, flexible structures such as fabrics. Secondly, judging on the build process of this battery stripes, it looks fairly simple to fabricate and to feed into a weaving process.

Realistically maybe not yet ready for fabrics used to make garments but certainly for powered messenger bags, backpacks and fashion bags to keep the smart devices charged up longer with smart and powerful fabrics.

[via New Scientist]

Researcher at the Ohio State University focus on antenna integration into clothing using plastic film and metallic thread. The potential benefit of doing so is the increase of four times of the antenna range compared to a conventional antenna.

Currently the textile antenna research is targeted towards smart fabrics for the army enhancing the ‘communication reliability and mobility of the soldiers’ according to Chi-Chih Chen, research associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Ohio State.

Embedding antennae into clothing is not a new concept but this particular research project adds a smart antenna twist to fabric antennae which are either printed or embroidered all over the clothing forming a antenna network which is controlled by a CPU. It is the same principle as the huge radio antennas that listen to space: instead of building one massive antenna, researcher build multiple smaller antenna and connect them to a network of antennas that represent a powerful, gigantic antenna.

Transferred to the human body means multiple antenna patches around the clothing form a much more powerful antenna when networked together because this antenna configuration will ensure under almost any situation at least one antenna element will always point into the signal direction.

What works for military purpose will have great value in other areas such as healthcare or monitoring of elderly people, staying connected during fitness activities to record workout or to give some extra boost to the iPhone antenna to eliminate call drop in otherwise radio silent side alleys.

The fabrication of the antenna elements look very simple, like printing of antenna pattern with conductive ink or using a embroidery machine as the research team has done for the prototype fabrication.

One dark spot has this smart, wearable antenna – the estimated cost right now is about U$ 200.- which naturally will limit the use for civilian application but there is a great likeliness these cost will come down considerably once volume production will start.

Read more about this at OSU Research News

Researcher at the Australian National University developed what seems a new generation of thin, flexible solar panels called SLIVER Cell.

The SLIVER cells are not thicker than a sheet of paper of human hair, making them extremely light weight and flexible. For me the most interesting development is the ‘bifacial’ design meaning these wearable solar panels re able to catch and convert sun light on both sides of the sheet.

Potentially this means greater degree of energy efficiency when used in conjunction with wearable objects which move, bend and change shape with the body movement.

According to the project’s Chief Investigator Professor Andrew Blakers ‘SLIVER cells have enabled the construction of efficient, rugged, flexible and light weight portable modules that convert light directly into electricity under a wide range of environmental conditions.’

The SLIVER cell wearable solar panel project was mainly funded by the Department of Defense – hence the demonstration of wearable solar panels and their potential usefulness for soldiers. Even if it turns out the SLIVER cell technology is not up to the rough conditions in a battle field, for the street worrier it will be a great battery relief for the gadgets in the pocket.

[source: ANU]

According to industry experts and cell-phone manufacturers NFC (Near Field Communication) will become a standard function in the near future for short range wireless communication between portable devices.

NFC works on high frequency like Bluetooth but over a shorter range, only a few centimeter and is based on inductive-coupling, where loosely coupled inductive circuits can be used to share power and data between devices.

Some of the application already existing based on NFC is cashless payment, access to restricted areas or as entry ticket, to name a few.

In time for the big scale roll out of NFC, Austrian research teams at Seibersdorf Laboratories and Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) came up with a woven NFC tag for integration into garments.

The new tags use standard NFC RFID chips that are attached to an antenna manufactured from thin copper wire, Seibersdorf scientist Stefan Cecil has told NFC World. The antenna is integrated into the fabric during the textile production process and, while the NFC chip currently then needs to be attached by hand, Cecil expects this process to also be automated in the future.

Whenever I am talking with people about wearable electronic the most burning question is always: can it be washed? It seems the team at the Seibersdorf Laboratories anticipated such question and tested washing cycles at 60°C, spin dried and ironed with a conventional electric iron – without impacting the functionality of the NFC textile tag.

On the technical side of NFC is a big plus point over Bluetooth, it does not need any pairing, it forms an instantaneous form of networking, similar to people that meet on the spot and start talking networking.

What does this exiting development mean for wearable technology? Imagine having the NFC tag inside a pocket of your garment where you keep your cell-phone. The garment can send it’s information coming from integrated senors monitoring your fitness or work conditions. The cell-phone can either process and visualize the data via an App or send it to the mother-ship in the cloud for processing.

Washing machines equipped with NFC (yes such machines are in the making) can ‘talk’ with the NFC enabled garment and select the required cleaning program.

For the high-tech fashionistas – changing color accents of a high-tech, illuminated dress via an App from the smart phone in the pocket before hitting the party scene is not a vision of the future but can be reality sooner that you might think.

[source: Near Field Communication World]

On a fairly regular bases news out of research around solar power by making solar cells more efficient, less expensive and preferable let them attach or print onto any surface pop up in the news.

Especially around the sunny summer time such news gain weight as anyone hanging out under the sun these days can easily imagine how much energy the sun is sending down to us earthlings.

So what is the expectation on the latest solar power research coming from MIT?

MIT’s researcher have been able to use a simple printing technique similar to the one used to print ‘silver lining in your bag of potato chips‘ to fabricate photovoltaic cells on cheap, flexible and lightweight substrates such as paper and potentially fabrics.

Forming a functional solar cell, multiple layers of ink have to be printed on cheaper, flexible and lighter  substrates than the glass of conventional solar cells. Attach wires to the printed cells and the sun’s power is ready for our gadgets – though – the efficiency of this type of printed solar cell is around 1% right now. There has to go much more (re)search into this technique before anyone could consider to power even a nano Pod with it.

The advantage would be of course obvious: light weight, potentially really cheaply to make and able to be used on none conformable surfaces such as the human body.

Oh well – wearable power is still high up in the sky for now but initiatives like this, pushing the boundary of the imaginable will one day deliver a highly efficient, reasonable costing wearable power solution.

[via: Fast Company]

A number of initiatives look into the sensible use of smart textiles, sensors embedded into the fabric of life like for medical purpose or evaluation performance in sport activities.

Using sensible, smart fabric covered airplane seats for a more comfortable and safer trip on these long distance flights of the future is a new angle but it does make a lot of sense to me.

SEAT (Smart tEchnologies for stress free Air Travel), a European project established under the roof of the Information Society Technologies (IST) Sixth Framework Program (FP6) is planing to upgrade airplane seats with senses.

The SEAT project scope is to develop smart responsive seats and interior environment with the capability of detecting physiological and psychological changes of passenger’s condition in real time based on a multi-sensor network integration into the textile seat covers.

Sitting still for a long time, as happens on flights, carries the risk of developing DVT (Deep Vein Thrombosis). If the seats indicates to the cabin crew someone hasn’t moved for a long time and is in the group of people more likely to develop DVT, the passenger can be given special attention, encouragement to do some exercise.

Likewise if the smart seat indicates very frequent movements and raised pulse can be a sign of a nervous passenger to bay attention towards.

The smart seat could allow to create a more individual atmosphere for each person by adjusting light, temperature or seat position based on the passengers behavior observed by the smart textiles on the seat.

This all sounds fantastic but I wonder how long it will take to have these smart seats in action.

The hot contested wearable power sector looks like to get a massive power boost with the Power Flex, a piezoelectric nano wire generator developed by Professor Zhong Lin Wang, director of the Center for Nanostructure Characterization at Georgia Tech.

Last time we posted about Professor Zhong Lin Wang’s wearable power research, he worked on nano technology enhanced piezo fibers which one day can turn our clothing into electrical power generators by harvesting our body movements.

Converting mechanical forces like stretch or pressure via Piezo electric materials into electrical power is a long standing technology but the efficiency of these Piezo electric devices generate only a very tiny amount of electricity, barley enough for low power sensors.

Professor Wang’s latest development, embedding tiny piezoelectric nanowires in flexible materials made it possible to fabricate nanowire-based generators that can harvest sufficient mechanical energy to power small devices, including light-emitting diodes and a liquid-crystal display.

This development represents a powerful breakthrough for wearable power generating materials, indicating that soon there we could see materials capable to generate enough power for devices like personal audio player or cell phones to be charged from nothing else than our clothing.

[source: Technology Review via Dvice]

A team of Nokia researchers working at Cambridge working on a morphing, stretchable face of next generation phones but this technology is also highly interesting for wearable electronic, to integrate complex electronic functionality into our second skin = our clothing.

The researchers work on projects such as Nanowire Sensing, Stretchable Electronic Skin and Electro-tactile Experience at Nokia’s research center.

As the work is being done at Nokia, naturally their first application ideas center around future cellphones but stretchable, skin like electronic materials are the stuff of which future clothing will be made.

Nanowire technology is used to create an artificial nose. By placing a nanowire on top of a chip, they can train it to recognize different substances which are placed close to the sensing surface.

The electronic skin is made by using evaporated gold as a conductor. The team created an electronic touch-pad which can be stretched like a rubber band, but still respond to touch and pressure. Tests have shown this keypad can stretch by up to 20 per cent of its original length without any drop in performance.

The ‘T‘ in the term T-Shirt might in future not anymore relate to the T-cut of the shirt but to the Telephone function of the shirt itself.

This all sounds exiting but keep in mind, these are research experiments with a time horizon of 10 years ore more before variants of these technologies could become reality.

[via: The Independent]

Visionaries at Bayer, a German high tech company directed their research power on photovoltaic according to a recently published press release.

The for us noticeable statement can be found towards the end of the press release stating ‘In future, photovoltaic applications could extend far beyond traditional solar modules. One such application could be a “translator shirt” for traveling salesmen and other people who travel a lot.

During a conversation, voice recognition software would be used to display the translated words on the shirt. “The surfaces of certain textiles can be equipped with photovoltaic elements, while other areas exhibit the properties of batteries. This would provide the power supply for the shirt,” explains Eckard Foltin from the Creative Center at Bayer MaterialScience.

The wearer of such high tech shirt would have to start the program and enter the target language via a label with integrated microphone and translation unit.

The optimism for envisioning the feasibility of a Translator shirt comes from the research Bayer scientists have made into photovoltaic thin-layer solar cells, Makrofol® polycarbonate encapsulation films that make it possible to produce flexible photovoltaic modules.

Based on the same technology and production processes not only solar cells can be made flexible enough to be integrated into fibers and textiles but also other silicon based functionality. And silicon after all is at the core of all electronics around us.

A translator shirt would be for sure a big hit in the market, imagine being able to buy one at the airport shop before you get on the plane to that great, distance location and your shirt is doing the speaking (or at least translation) for you.

Next to interactive gloves, wearable power is coming into the news on a regular, frequent basis. The latest news I picked up is based on research work at the University of Southampton where scientists aim to generate energy through people’s movement.

In theory human motion generates an estimated 67 watts of energy with each step. This is a lot which easily can supply power to run a notebook or any of the other indispensable electronic pocket devices we carry around.

The challenge is how to collect and transform this power of our body into electrical energy and feed it to our gadgets while we move through our days.

The scientists think the solution is by applying rapid printing processes and active printed inks to create an energy harvesting film on textiles.

‘This project looks at generating electrical power from the way people move and then applying an energy harvesting film to the clothes they wear or the materials they have around them,’ says Dr Steve Beeby, head of the research team. ‘We will generate useful levels of power which will be harvested through the films in the textiles. The two big challenges in smart textiles are supplying power and surviving washing.’

The research into the Microflex project, , a Framework 7 European Union funded project, is set to start in October and runs until 2015.

At the end the project will provide a toolbox of materials and processes suitable for a range of different fabrics that will enable users to develop the energy harvesting fabric best suited to their requirements.

We will keep our eyes clued on this project as we do watch out about other wearable power initiatives. Mostly long term projects but one never looses the hope to get the break through one day soon. Wearable power is a much needed element when it comes to make smart clothing.

(source: Science Daily via Ecouterre]