Wearable Intrinsically Soft, Stretchable, Flexible Devices for Memories and Computing

A recent trend in the development of high mass consumption electron devices is towards electronic textiles (e-textiles), smart wearable devices, smart clothes, and flexible or printable electronics. Intrinsically soft, stretchable, flexible, Wearable Memories and Computing devices (WMCs) bring us closer to sci-fi scenarios, where future electronic systems are totally integrated in our everyday outfits and help us in achieving a higher comfort level, interacting for us with other digital devices such as smartphones and domotics, or with analog devices, such as our brain/peripheral nervous system. WMC will enable each of us to contribute to open and big data systems as individual nodes, providing real-time information about physical and environmental parameters (including air pollution monitoring, sound and light pollution, chemical or radioactive fallout alert, network availability, and so on). Furthermore, WMC could be directly connected to human brain and enable extremely fast operation and unprecedented interface complexity, directly mapping the continuous states available to biological systems. This review focuses on recent advances in nanotechnology and materials science and pays particular attention to any result and promising technology to enable intrinsically soft, stretchable, flexible WMC

Multifunctional Foldable Knitted Structures: Fundamentals, Advances and Applications

Contemporary multifunctional textiles are based on hi-tech functionalization. Knitted structures can be relatively rapidly designed and produced in a variety of textures due to their composition of many interlacing loop elements and their combinations. Foldable weft-knitted structures exist in a wide range of forms from simple rolls, ribs, and pleats to more complex three-dimensional structures. They exhibit new kind of geometry and deformation mechanisms. Some of them exhibit auxetic potential. Foldable knitted structures are multifunctional and widely usable. They can be produced in a variety of structures, qualities, and dimensions: in panels, fully-fashioned, or seamless. Their possible application lies in different fields, such as fashionable and functional clothing, sportswear, medical care, packaging, interior design, sound and shock absorption, etc

Promoting Healthy Body Image Through the Costume Design Process

This paper focuses on incorporating healthy body image and body awareness into two aspects of teaching costume design; the research and rendering phase, and the fitting and design realization process. Using Lisa Loomer’s The Waiting Room, a play exploring the body modification of three women from different cultures and time periods as a basis for research and character analysis, students begin to understand the cultural, social, and political frameworks behind significant historical fashion trends, and to translate that information into a design that communicates the same messages on a contemporary body to a contemporary audience. As students begin to research each culture and time period, they are tasked with finding ways to relate to the characters through common feelings of body confinement and dysmorphia, for example, finding commonalities between the Chinese practice of foot binding, Victorian corsetry, and modern day plastic surgery. Advanced student designers, when given the opportunity to realize their designs, are challenged with promoting healthy body image through their sketches and in fittings with performers. By addressing the way costume sketching is taught and steering away from 9-head fashion sketches, student designers are better able to demonstrate a full understanding of character, and the performer who is represented in the sketch is more likely to relate to the design and see it as an attainable image. In preparation for fittings, student designers are coached on how to address and clothe varying body types and are then guided through the fitting. Designers learn to see and dress each performer’s body without judgment or cultural bias, while maintaining the significant style lines and aesthetics a particular production, time period, and culture requires

'The emotional wardrobe': a fashion perspective on the integration of technology and clothing

Since the Industrial Revolution, fashion and technology have been linked through the textile and manufacturing industries, a relationship that has propelled technical innovation and aesthetic and social change. Today a new alliance is emerging through the integration of electronic technology and smart materials on the body. However, it is not fashion designers who are exploiting this emerging area but interaction design, performance art and electronic and computing technologists. 'The Emotional Wardrobe' is a practice-based research project that seeks to address this imbalance by integrating technology with clothing from a fashion perspective. It aims to enhance fashion's expressive and responsive potential by investigating clothing that can both represent and stimulate an emotional response through the interface of technology. Precedents can be found in the work of other practitioners who merge clothing design with responsive material technology to explore social interaction, social commentary and body responsive technology. Influence is also sought from designers who investigate the notion of paradoxical emotions. A survey of emotion science, emotional design, and affective computing is mapped onto a fashion design structure to assess if this fusion can create new 'poetic' paradigms for the interaction of fashion and technology. These models are explored through the production of 'worn' and 'unworn' case studies which are visualised through responsive garment prototypes and multimedia representations. The marriage of fashion and technology is tested through a series of material experiments that aim to create a new aesthetic vocabulary that is responsive and emotional. They integrate traditional fashion fabrics with material technology to enhance the definition of fashion. The study shows that the merger of fashion and technology can offer a more personal and provocative definition of self, one which actively involves the wearer in a mutable aesthetic identity, replacing the fixed physicality of fashion with a constant flux of self-expression and playful psychological experience. The contribution of the research consists of: the integration of technology to alter communication in fashion, a recontextualisation of fashion within a wider arena of emotion and technology, the use of technologies from other disciplines to materialize ideas and broaden the application of those technologies, and the articulation of a fashion design methodology

A Novel smart jacket for blood pressure measurement based on shape memory alloys

Smart textiles with medical applications offer the possibility of continuous and non-invasively monitoring which benefit patients and doctors. To measure blood pressure in premature infants a miniature actuator that can be sewn to the fabric is required. For this reason, an actuator based on shape memory alloys has been designed so that it compresses as a conventional air cuff but with 3.5W power consumption and can be controlled by applying different Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) signals, thus offering several levels of compression. In addition, the first concept prototype of the smart jacket is achieved; made of a natural fiber fabric that incorporates: an optical sensor, a capacitive pressure sensor with great accuracy, the force actuator and a Lilypad Simblee control board which can be sewn to the fabric, is washable and has a Low Energy Bluetooh module (BBE) to connect to other devices. All this allows the systolic, diastolic and cardiac pressure to be measured for the first time in the world with the smart jacket by a semi-occlusive method. Altogether with a mobile application which allows doctors to monitor the patient at every moment, perform remote control, data measurement and recording in a comfortable and intuitive way that satisfies the necessity for a better clinical management to the growing number of patients and is a source of savings for the clinical services

Designing wearable sensors for Preventative Health: An exploration of material, form and function

The financial burden on global healthcare systems has reached unprecedented levels and as a result, attention has been shifting from the traditional approach of disease management and treatment towards prevention (Swan, 2012). Wearable devices for Preventative Health have become a focus for innovation across academia and industry, thus this thesis explores the design of wearable biochemical and environmental sensors, which can provide users with an early warning, detection and monitoring system that could integrate easily into their existing lives. The research aims to generate new practical knowledge for the design and development of wearable sensors and, motivated by the identification of compelling design opportunities, merges three strands of enquiry. The research methodology supports this investigation into material, form and function through the use of key practice-based methods, which include Participatory Action Research (active immersion and participation in a particular community and user workshops) and the generation and evaluation of a diverse range of artefacts. Based on the user-centred investigation of the use case for biochemical and environmental sensing, the final collection of artefacts demonstrates a diverse range of concepts, which present biodegradable and recyclable nonwoven material substrates for the use in non-integrated sensors. These sensors can be skin-worn, body-worn or clothing-attached for in-situ detection and monitoring of both internal (from the wearer) and external (from the environment) stimuli. The research proposes that in order to engage a broad section of the population in a preventative lifestyle to significantly reduce the pressure on global healthcare systems, wearable sensors need to be designed so they can appeal to as many users as possible and integrate easily into their existing lifestyles, routines and outfits. The thesis argues that this objective could be achieved through the design and development of end-of-life considered and cost-effective substrate materials, non-integrated wearable form factors and meticulous consideration of a divergent range of user needs and preferences, during the early stages of design practice

Automated design optimisation and simulation of stitched antennas for textile devices

This thesis describes a novel approach for designing 7-segment and 5-angle pocket and collar planar antennas (for operation at 900 MHz). The motivation for this work originates from the problem of security of children in rural Nigeria where there is risk of abduction. There is a strong potential benefit to be gained from hidden wireless tracking devices (and hence antennas) that can protect their security. An evolutionary method based on a genetic algorithm was used in conjunction with electromagnetic simulation. This method determines the segment length and angle between segments through several generations. The simulation of the antenna was implemented using heuristic crossover with non-uniform mutation. Antennas obtained from the algorithm were fabricated and measured to validate the proposed method.This first part of this research has been limited to linear wire antennas because of the wide range and flexibility of this class of antennas. Linear wire antennas are used for the design of high or low gain, broad or narrow band antennas. Wire antennas are easy and inexpensive to build. All the optimised linear wire antenna samples exhibit similar performances, most of the power is radiated within the GSM900 frequency band. The reflection coefficient (S11) is generally better than -10dB. The method of moment (MoM-NEC2) and FIT (CST Studio Suite 2015) solvers were used for this design. MATLAB is used to as an interface to control computational electromagnetic solvers for antenna designs and analysis. The genetic algorithm procedures were written in MATLAB. The second part of the work focuses on meshed ground planes for applications at 900 MHz global system for mobile communications (GSM), 2.45 GHz industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) band and 5 GHz wearable wireless local area networks (WLAN) frequencies. Square ground planes were developed and designed using linear equations in MATLAB. The ground plane was stitched using embroidery machines. To examine the effect of meshing on the antenna performance and to normalise the meshed antenna to a reference, solid patch antenna was designed, fabricated on an FR4 substrate. A finite grid of resistors was created for numerical simulation in MATLAB. The resistance from the centre to any node of a finite grid of resistors are evaluated using nodal analysis. The probability that a node connects to each node in the grid was computed. The circuit model has been validated against the experimental model by measurement of the meshed ground plane. A set of measurement were collected from a meshed and compared with the numerical values, they show good agreement.</div

Solar cells inside woven textiles

Energy harvesting textiles are a relatively new field of research. In the future our clothes, accessories, and other fabrics could generate electricity from the sun and charge our devices on the go. While photovoltaic yarns, and solar cells printed directly on textiles are technologies of the future, there are already suitable solutions on the market for small scale energy harvesting. Some existing products such as energy harvesting backpacks and jackets already make use of these alternatives but mostly the level of integration of solar cells to the textile is low. The technology remains as a separate part instead of merging into the design and construction of textile. The goal of this practice-based research is to create woven textiles that allow integrating photovoltaics to the functional and aesthetic design of the fabric. The background research aims to introduce the relevant terms and concepts about solar cells for textile design purposes, and paint an overall picture of the future of the photovoltaic textiles field. During the practice-based research part, this knowledge is used for woven material prototyping and testing. The thesis work establishes a design strategy which combines creative material experimentation with backing from applied scientific exploration. Traditional textile design practice is used to develop handwoven material drafts which allow inserting solar cells into the structure of multilayered cloth. To find out how the properties of textiles affect the efficiency of the solar cell, the textile prototypes were tested during several rounds. Solar Cells Inside Woven Textiles is a continuation of an interdisciplinary research project with the New Energy Technologies group from Aalto Engineering Physics Department. The thesis builds on the knowledge generated during the previous process. Because of the collaborative nature of the project, the role of a textile designer in an interdisciplinary research project is addressed. The reflections are based on personal experiences during the process and conversations with design and technology professionals about the subject. This thesis work is positioned on the ground in-between design and science. The final outcome is a collection of woven textile prototypes showcasing the learning and possibilities of designing for photovoltaics integration. Visualization of the collected data allows comparison of different materials, colors and weave structures and provides feedback of the design choices. Using textile design as a tool for scientific exploration may offer tangible proposals for future concepts and research questions. This work serves as one example of working as a designer in a hybrid environment