Second skin

We tend to think of wear­ables as bracelets and watches, but the con­cept goes much fur­ther. The idea of hav­ing con­nected, smart-cloth­ing has been around for a long time, but has not evolved at the same pace as other porta­bles so com­mon in our every-day lives. This is mainly be­cause of the dif­fi­cul­ties of scale pro­duc­tion and the in­te­gra­tion of elec­tronic com­po­nents com­pat­i­ble with fab­rics that are not as easy to pro­duce as plas­tic wrist­bands we are now used to.

Even so, re­search con­tin­ues, and one of the places where things are on the move is Cat­alo­nia. The Eu­reco tech­nol­ogy cen­tre has helped re­vi­talise our tex­tile in­dus­try by in­tro­duc­ing in­tel­li­gence tech­nol­ogy into the tra­di­tional in­dus­try at its cen­tres in Maresme. The Reimag­ine Tex­tile pro­ject , Mataro's Tec­no­Cam­pus and the Cen­tre de Re­cerca i Trans­ferència de Tec­nolo­gia Tèxtil at Canet de Mar, have pro­gressed on sev­eral fronts. One of the most im­por­tant is the cre­ation of elec­tro­lu­mi­nes­cent fab­ric. By print­ing var­i­ous lay­ers of inks on flex­i­ble sub­strates which are strate­gi­cally placed to pass elec­tric cur­rent, per­mits en­ergy to be con­verted into light. The tech­nique, al­low­ing the fab­ric to emit light, has al­ready been used to cre­ate T-shirts, tops, jer­seys, hel­mets or trousers for mo­tor­cy­cles that greatly in­crease the vis­i­bil­ity of the wearer. The printed sur­face which is il­lu­mi­nated, less than 500 mi­crons thin, flex­i­ble, with high cur­va­ture, low en­ergy con­sump­tion and high im­pact re­sis­tance are ad­van­tages of this tech­nol­ogy that Cat­alo­nia is pi­o­neer­ing.

The in­tel­li­gent and func­tional tex­tile sec­tor is ex­pected to pass the 9.7 mil­lion euro sales mark of 2013 and reach 135 mil­lion euros in 2018. Aware of this po­ten­tial, Eu­reco's Reimag­ine Tex­tile pro­gramme aims to “help Cata­lan com­pa­nies un­der­stand what their busi­ness could be in 2030,” says the Eu­reco's busi­ness man­age­ment di­rec­tor, Michael Rey.

The tech­nol­ogy cen­tre, how­ever, does not rule out work­ing with multi­na­tion­als in other fields such as sen­sors in the fuse­lage of Air­bus air­craft or cre­at­ing awnings that cap­ture solar en­ergy in shade and more mod­er­ate weather con­di­tions. It has also helped cre­ate heated hunt­ing jack­ets or cy­cling jer­seys, but the main part of its work will con­tinue to be fo­cused on the health sec­tor and mon­i­tor­ing data. “More and more, there are sen­sors that mon­i­tor every­thing. What makes more sense is to in­te­grate them into com­fort­able gar­ments such as socks, shirt and pants, rather than rely on gad­gets. This will be very im­por­tant in the world of sports, where we al­ready see play­ers wear­ing mon­i­tor­ing vests, but also in the field of health and tele-med­i­cine. The day the doc­tor will mon­i­tor our health and re­cov­ery at a dis­tance is not far off, “says Rey.

Shirts that mon­i­tor vital signs and per­spi­ra­tion have al­ready been de­vel­oped at the Eu­reco fa­cil­i­ties. In Japan, one of the epi­cen­tres of the tech­no­log­i­cal world, two com­pa­nies have joined to­gether in pre­sent­ing a sin­glet that com­mu­ni­cates data on the per­son who is wear­ing it to im­prove per­for­mance and phys­i­cal con­di­tion by mo­bile. It reads lo­ca­tion, heart rate, and even con­trols the calo­ries con­sumed and burned. Used cor­rectly, the wearer can view in­for­ma­tion and re­ceive ad­vice on how to im­prove per­for­mance or a spe­cific train­ing pro­gramme. It will prob­a­bly be on the mar­ket this year, pos­si­bly through a chain of gyms in the West.

Of course, Google also wants to get in on the act. In 2015 it an­nounced the launch of the Jacquard pro­ject, for the in­te­gra­tion of wire­less de­vices and small elec­tronic con­duits in cloth­ing as a step to­wards the pro­duc­tion of smart tex­tiles. The pro­ject, which also in­cludes a part­ner­ship with Levi Strauss, sees deal­ing with phone calls by touch­ing a gar­ment much the way we use tac­tile screens now. If the pro­ject is suc­cess­ful, it could be an im­por­tant plat­form for the cre­ation of prod­ucts for ap­pli­ca­tions from com­mu­ni­ca­tions, health, fit­ness, fash­ion, and work. So it seems only a mat­ter of time be­fore we are wear­ing tech­nol­ogy as a sec­ond skin.