Technical Report on

Smart Fabrics & Textile Seminar

Omar Elshal
Computer Science and Engineering
German University in Cairo
omar.elshal@student.guc.edu.eg

Abstract
Wearable Computing field is flourishing larger every day and within it emerged
many fields that are growing rapidly with new possibilities and technologies. And
while many research wearable computers are implemented nowadays on the body,
but people would definitely prefer to wear smart fabrics or garments instead of
having wires and sensors in plastics against their body. As smart fabrics field
matures and develops, the chances are big to turn the current research results into
commercial opportunities, as this field of wearable computing is being designed to
meet new and innovative applications in the military, public safety, healthcare,
space exploration, sports, and consumer fitness fields. This paper examines the
current state of the arts and research results in this massive field. And the previous
related work before them and finally a discussion and conclusion on these state of
the arts and researches and future work that might emerge from them.

1. Introduction
The field of smart fabrics and garments is very promising as clothing is one of the three
basic human needs since the beginning of the human civilization. And as generations pass,
the clothing becomes more useful and important until it became the heart of fashion and it
even determined every generation or a certain era. Thus the technological advances in our
current world that made everything around us smart urge us to innovate and make smart
fabrics which contain electronic circuits and also have data, power and touch sensing and
above all these smart fabrics would be comfortable and safe. Thats why these circuits use
passive components sewn from conductive yarns along with other normal components, to
create interactive electronic systems inside your textile.
Many years before, we could only see smart fabrics or clothing which contains smart
electronic circuits portrayed only in sci-fi movies. And from there came the inspiration to
make it real, but there were and still many issues that faced the engineers and designers of
smart fabrics industry. To shed the light on these problems, some of the first efforts can be
investigated. At MIT started one of the promising projects in the smart fabrics field, it
consisted of conductive metallic organza integrated into fabric to create interactive textile.
The first interactive fabric was a row and column based musical keyboard. The resulting
device was flexible enough to be folded and was capable of emitting the appropriate
keyboard notes via external speakers. The microcontroller for the keyboard used was
programmed to generate Musical Instrument Digital Interface control data, allowing
players to easily trigger different notes on the attached synthesizer. Unfortunately, this
keyboard did not measure pressure information which is crucial for expressive control in

music. For all these drawbacks, however, users found it quite satisfying to make music by
crushing and pressing this keyboard.
The previous interactive smart textiles used integrated wiring and carrying devices that add
weight to the clothing making them uncomfortable and hardly practical for daily use. Also,
these textiles are quite expensive and still have issues related to flexibility and safety.
From the figure below [4], Smart fabrics is predicted to be growing, although not like other
fields progress. But the growth is constantly increasing each year which paves the way for
more products in this field to see the light and not to mention also that the highest growing
field, Healthcare can be integrated perfectly with smart fabrics.

The rest of this technical report paper covers the following:

A related work in section 2 to discuss the problems of smart textile more deeply.
Implementation done in section 3 which discuss the current state of the arts that is
provided to solve the previous problems mentioned.
Discussion which contains an evaluation of the mentioned state of the art solutions
which is section 4.
Final conclusion and future work in section 5 which summarizes and highlights
what have been discussed and what can be achieved in the near future.

2. Related Work
While protection and usability were the two common dimensions typically associated with
textiles as clothing. However, due to the rapid technological advances in our life, a third
dimension is rising that of intelligence which is being integrated into fabrics to produce
interactive textiles [3]. Eventually, the real challenge is in combining novel and advanced
technology along with a sense for fashion and usability to satisfy user needs.
The general issues of smart fabrics field are no different than the main issues of the
wearable computing industry unless specific requirements specified due to the nature of
each item. The main challenges are Size, Cost and Power.
The technology of smart textiles can be integrated in almost all existing fields that revolves
around our life like:
Biomedical field (e.g. manufacture of smart sutures, tissues)
Military field (e.g. uniforms which can detect chemical threats in a battlefield)
Sports (e.g. fabrics which can make athletes feel comfortable)
Fashion and entertainment (e.g. fabrics which can change color interactively)
Comfort wears (e.g. fabrics which can maintain body temperature)
Space (e.g. special spacesuits designed for astronauts).
Smart textiles have a lot of other applications beside the mentioned above, but before we
discuss the latest state of the arts let us mention first the previous proposed smart textile
applications and discuss their drawbacks and issues they have and might share.
Row and column fabric keyboard [5]:
This keyboard (Figure 1) is a textile switch matrix sewn from conducting and nonconducting fabric. It consists of two layers of highly conductive metallic organza with a
resistance of approximately 10 V/m and non-conducting rows separated by an insulating
layer of tulle. The microcontroller of the keyboard was programmed to generate standard
MIDI control data, allowing players to trigger various notes on an attached synthesizer.
Unfortunately, the keyboard lacks the ability to measure pressure information which is
crucial to explicitly control musical pitches, as there was no nonlinear element present at
the switching intersections resulting in false contacts observed by the microcontroller when
many keys were pressed at the same time. Eventually, the piecework nature of the keyboard
required more manual work than was hoped for.

Figure 1 - Row/column fabric keyboard

E-textile construction Kit [5]:

Construction kits provide simple modules, construction kit pieces, which can be combined
in many ways to provide several functionalities. As in figure 2, the construction kit consists
of a microcontroller, an assortment of sensors and actuators, and infrared transceiver, an
on/off button and a battery pack. It can be noticed from the figure below that the
components are either made entirely from textile or has been packaged to be stitched to
clothes. But unfortunately this kit lacks the luxury of being comfortable and more user
friendly as we discover the applications of it.

Figure 2- E-textile Construction Kit

The different components of the kit provide a variety of applications like communication
shirts (figure-3) which are shirts that can communicate with one another wirelessly via IR.
The shirts contains RGB LED, a vibrating motor in a wooden bead and one IR transceiver.
Another application of the kit is temperature sensing hat (figure-4), it consists of a
microcontroller, temperature sensor, RGB LED and on/off switch and battery. From figure
4 below the RGB LED is only thing outside the hat to show the difference in temperature.
As the temperature increases, the light gets redder.

Figure 3- Communication Shirt

Figure 4- Temperature sensing hat

In 2012, a number of EU funded projects resulted in numerous prototypes for smart

textile PPE garments. Safe@Sea (completed 2012) developed advanced personal
protective suit for fishing. Sensors were integrated into protective outer garments to
detect falling overboard in a fully waterproof smart fabric garment. The project was quite
fascinating except it lacked being comfortable a little bit, but it made huge step towards
the smart e-textiles in this field [7].

Figure 5 Safe@Sea project

3. Implementation
The term textronics refers to interconnected approaches in the process of producing and
designing smart fabrics materials, which began on 2001. The latest state of the arts depend
on this technology. From figure-6 below, one can notice that the process of manufacturing
textronics has a synergic connection between textiles industry, electronics and embedded
computers [6].
Textronic products must satisfy the following features:
Flexibility: being easy to modify the construction at design stage.
Intelligence: possible to get automatic change in properties due to external factors.
Multifunctional: meaning facility of having different functions by one product

Figure 6 - Textronic

In this section, the latest state of the arts and research approaches are going to be discussed
thoroughly. These approaches tries to solve the problems and challenges of the previous
works and elaborate new ideas instead of the old ones.
Biomedical:
1st Approach: Clothing+ [5]

One of the most promising smart textile applications is healthcare and biomedical field as
we saw from figure-1. Medical heart rate sensor, mounted on a textile conductive strap
which is developed by Clothing+ in Finland. The first version of the textile was done in
cooperation with Polar Elektro and they plan for mass production in china supplying
Adidas, Garmin, Philips and Timex. Currently they manufacture more than 3 million belts
each year, which is half of the total global heart rate monitor market. The device consists
of a microcontroller for data analysis and heart rate sensor which measures acceleration,
heart rate, speed and distance.

Figure 7- Clothing+, Adidas belt

2nd Approach: Textile-based drug-delivery systems [1]

A relatively new category of smart medical textiles is lubricating drug-delivery dressing.

Sometimes, transdermal drug delivery can be a good alternative to traditional pills and
medications when it is crucial to reduce the effect on stomach and intestinal tract and also
in the cases when its difficult to get oral administrations. The integration of textile and
biotechnology along with chemistry can offer numerous scenarios for drug delivery system
development. The approach is quite creative and still relatively new as its prototype was
released in late 2013.

Figure 8 - drug delivery dressing

Space
3rd Approach: Smart Sock [7]
Smart sock is able to monitor the efficacy of astronaut training exercises in the
space in order to help to reduce muscle degeneration experienced during loss of
gravity in space. The sock consists of built-in sensors that record the electrical
activity of muscle (EMG) and light to detect oxygen content in and around the
muscle (NIRS). ESA (European Space Agency) contracted Ohmatex for
development and the first prototype was completed in October 2012.

Figure 9 - Smart sock

4th Approach: Astroskin (Smart T-shirt) [7]

Astroskin is a T-shirt which is able to monitor astronauts vital signs in real
time then it transmits the data wirelessly to the medical teams on Earth, who in
turn can interpret the data to evaluate how a crew is corresponding to their tasks
and environment. It has been developed by CarrTechnologies, featuring their
Hexoskin technology. The results of current experiments in Antarctica will be
shared with the Canadian Space Agency for possible use on future space
missions.

Military
5th Approach: Auxetic Materials for military uniform [6]
According to a study by Grand View Research Inc. in 2013, Protection and military
accounted for 27% of the overall market share of smart fabrics & textiles in 2012, and is
expected to continue sharing the largest segment in the next 6 years. The Auxetic material
have the ability of becoming wider when they are stretched and narrower when they are
compressed, in other words, they have a negative Poissons ratio. These materials have
other useful properties including high fracture toughness, resistance and energy absorption.
Therefore they have great potentials in various fields such as bulletproof vests or helmets
besides of course being integrated in smart fabrics field and when all of these are combined
together, it would serve perfectly well in military uniform manufacturing (figure 10).

Figure 10 - smart military uniform

4. Discussion & Evaluation

In this discussion, we are going to discuss the results and statistics obtained from using the
previously mentioned approaches.
The mentioned smart textiles for health for healthcare ensured patients mobility, safety
and comfort. Applications of smart textiles for medicine and healthcare vary from the
surgical applications of single yarns to complex wearable and axillary systems for
personalized healthcare. Unfortunately, there is still no classification smart textile for these
applications, but initially those can be described referring to commonly distinguished
groups in normal medical textiles.
Due to new functions, several new categories must be highlighted such as, textile drugrelease systems, active textiles for therapy and textiles with biometric performance.
Moreover, smart materials find applications in hospital textiles and clothing for medical
personal. For the type that requires specific application, most solutions are bought by
functional textiles. For example, hospital textiles contain usually antimicrobial and
antibacterial properties or low friction coating.
It can be noticed that conductive textile materials are more often used in manufacturing of
heating textiles that find applications in blankets for operating rooms. First most known
attempts in textile sensor development were reported nearly a decade ago by Georgia Tech
under the name of Wearable Motherboards.
According to a study conducted in the UK (2008-2010) to explore the impact of adopting
telehealth. The results published at the end of 2011, reported a 15% reduction in A&E visits,
14% reduction in bed days of the patients examined and 20% reduction in emergency
admission. As a result of the previous statistics, the NHS started an imitative in 2012
aiming that by 2017, telehealth care would be provided to 3 million people with long term
health conditions as described in figure 11.

Figure 11 - Global forecast of telehealth

Although most of the discussed approaches related to military or space are under
construction and are still manufactured as prototypes, they have overridden many
challenges of the old researches making them quite reliable and affordable. The Canadian
space agency is going to implement the Astroskin project in their future space missions
after they receive the results conducted by researchers at the University of Quebec.
For the military field, the UK military is developing a light weight military uniform with a
reduction in battery and cable weight made from a conductive fabric integrated to the
uniform which contains shirt, helmet, backpack, gloves and weapons platform. The Centre
for Defense Enterprise (CDE) has awarded 234,000 to Intelligent Textiles for finding
smart textile solutions for reducing the weight load for soldiers. Intelligent Textiles is also
working with BAE systems to integrate other equipment into the military uniform which
is expected to be available by 2015.

5. Conclusions and Future Work

The smart fabrics and textiles field is still at an early stage of development with many new
innovations in the pipeline which is going to change the way we look at textiles nowadays.
Researcher in this field may think at first that this field is still has poor development and
not thoroughly investigated. But with the mentioned approaches previously along with
hundreds of other running research projects on the smart textiles field, it is unfair to say
that it is a poorly developed field.
The development process is quite promising and many of the mentioned approaches have
solved many challenges and will be providing the novice user with a comfortable, secure
and safe smart fabrics. After the synthetic fibers manufacturing, it is expected that smart
fabrics will revolutionize the textile industry.
On the manufacturing side, the textile industry in the past decade or so, has changed
dramatically due to more attention on smart textiles. The western world today focuses
extensively on research and applications of smart textiles compared to the classical
ordinary clothing sectors. In the next twenty years; the smart fiber sector is expected to
scale astronomical heights so much so that they would become indispensable to human
beings.
On the commercial side, however, these textiles are still to realize aspirations of potential
buyers who would like to have the product at reasonable prices. But that is quite natural
since any new technology takes its own time to get fully commercialized. And the smart
textile industry is hardly a decade old. It can be anticipated that this industry will have a
huge market of its own, and the market will not be made entirely of the affluent class; in
fact majority of consumers would be from the middle class world over. Instead of cutting
prices all the time, the textile industry should focus on delivering customized products with
enhanced functionality features like say, smartness. The future does not lie in cutting costs
all the time, but in being innovative at every process of product design.
For the future work, present researches in smart textiles focuses on the following areas:
Fiber optics.
Intelligent coating/ membrane.
Photo sensitive materials.
Neural network and control systems.
Tissue engineering.
Thermally sensitive materials.
Chemical/ drug release, and many more.
Considering the current trends, the worldwide textile industry is over 50 million metric
tons per year, and if smart textiles can capture only a measly 1%, it still means that this
industry worth more than 1 billion euros. The intelligent textile sector represents the 21st
century of fibers and fabrics industry. The smart textile industry is poised to revolutionize
the world textile sector in the coming few years. Eventually, the field has great promises
in the near future that its products will make inroads to the novice user sooner than we
think.

Appendix
Table of figures:
Figure 1 - Row/column fabric keyboard ......................................................... 3
Figure 2- E-textile Construction Kit ............................................................... 4
Figure 3- Communication Shirt ...................................................................... 4
Figure 4- Temperature sensing hat ................................................................. 4
Figure 5 Safe@Sea project .......................................................................... 5
Figure 6 - Textronic ........................................................................................ 5
Figure 7- Clothing+, Adidas belt .................................................................... 6
Figure 8 - drug delivery dressing .................................................................... 6
Figure 9 - Smart sock ...................................................................................... 7
Figure 10 - smart military uniform ................................................................. 8
Figure 11 - Global forecast of telehealth ........................................................ 9

References
Additional Papers:
[1] Mecnika, V., et al. "Smart textiles for healthcare: applications and technologies." Rural
Environment. Education. Personality.(REEP). Proceedings of the International Scientific
Conference (Latvia). 2014.
[2] Khler, Andreas R. "Challenges for eco-design of emerging technologies: The case of
electronic textiles." Materials & Design 51 (2013): 51-60.
[3] Sungmee Park and Sundaresan Jayaraman (2003). Smart Textiles: Wearable Electronic
Systems. MRS Bulletin, 28, pp 585-591. doi:10.1557/mrs2003.170.
[4] Florian Schumacher (2014), Wearable Technologies News Roundup - January.

Common Papers:
[5] Ruchi Kholiya & Dr. Shahnaz Jahan , Beginning of a new era with Electronic Textiles.
[6] Nitin Ajmera, Satya Priya Dash, Chet Ram Meena, Smart Textile.
[7] Christian Dalsgaard and Rachael Sterrett. (2014), White paper on smart textile garments and
devices: a market overview of smart textile wearable technologies