WC Archive

Computer-enabled fabric would serve as a remarkable interface between our selves and our environment. Embedded with sensors, clothing could easily alert us to airborne contaminants such as pollen, particulate pollution, carbon monoxide, or worse. Similarly, it could keep track of our health, responding to bodily changes reflecting illness. Hospital linens could serve as secondary patient monitors, alerting nursing staff of changes in condition. Smart fabric gets even stranger if a limited mobility is added, from clothing able to loosen or tighten the weave of the fabric in response to temperature to upholstery able to contain a spill to sheets which reduce hospital patient bedsores. Include the ability to function as a display, and you have everything from a sleeve serving as a cameraphone display to clothing which can act as a visual beacon in an emergency.

Although the computer as furoshiki isn't possible just yet, many of its pieces are starting to come together, albeit in primitive form. We are seeing increasing numbers and varieties of computers embedded into upholstery, blankets and especially clothing. The last couple of months has seen a rapid proliferation of electronics-embedded fabrics.

Input: Physorg.com today reports on a new technology which makes it possible to manufacture digital sensors and switches out of textiles. The textiles are sensitive to pressure and moisture, and can be rolled up, washed, even sewn.

Sensors: The BBC has an example of biomedical sensors in clothing. Similarly, researchers at Georgia Tech designed a "smart shirt" able to monitor biomedical data for the military.

Display: Josh Rubin: Cool Hunting had a quick note last week about jackets from Nyx sportswear which contain embedded wearable displays. "The display is quite flexible and is not raised from the surface of the fabric. To show scrolling text or a graphical animation, just plug in your Palm Pilot..." A demo movie can be found here (Rubin apologizes for the music, as do I).

Mobility: Our own Régine Debatty's Near Near Future reported last month about Nicholas Steadman's Blanket robot, which is able to crawl up and over a prone body. Intended as an art project, it is nonetheless a sign of future developments.

Power: solar panels woven into fabric are becoming almost commonplace, with both jackets and backpacks being available. Both claim to be able to charge low-power computers like Game Boys and iPods (and, of course, mobile phones).

Processing and Memory: This is the hard part, at least for now. A current-technology jacket computer would still require a separate non-flexible computing device to function. Although in principle this isn't necessarily a bad thing -- a phone-sized computer which connects to your jacket when you're wearing it, to your sofa when you're home, even to your blanket at night could be useful. But a self-contained cloth computer will need to have cloth -- or, at least, flexible -- processing. Fortunately, that may well be on the way. Silicon Valley company Rolltronics, which specializes in flexible plastic switches and displays, is reportedly working on printable plastic processors and memory. According to the 2001 Economist article, the plastic transistors should be able to perform as well as a 286 processor (remember those?) -- that is, not very fast, but not far off from the processor in a typical mobile phone.

A fabric computing concept which parallels some of these ideas is the smart fabric patch developed at MIT.

Each patch contains a functional unit of the system - a microprocessor and memory plus either a radio transceiver, a sensor, a microphone, batteries or a display. Put the patches together in different ways and you can create a variety of information-providing or environment-sensing objects, say developers Adrian Cable, Gauri Nanda and Michael Bove at MIT’s Media Lab. [...] With the patches... a user can easily swap modules to use the system for a variety of functions.

The example given is a fabric bag comprising several of the patches. Connected by velcro, the patches can assemble something moderately functional. That said, I'm not sure they'd make a good coat.