E-textiles: Making wearable computers

By: Liz Barry | Lynchburg News and Advance
Published: November 30, 2007

The garments are so cutting edge, they’re in a league of their own.

I don’t mean the latest designs on Project Runway. I’m talking about the clothing being developed by a team of researches at Virginia Tech.

The “electronic textiles” are clothes that can track the movement of different parts of the body. For example, a pair of pants can sense how fast the legs are moving, whether a person is walking or running.

With these clothes, you’re a walking Internet connection. Literally. Talk about being wired.

How is this possible? The smart fabric contains a network of wires and electronic hardware that senses movement. A built-in Bluetooth device sends the information to a laptop, which tracks the data.

“The wires are woven directly in,” says Tom Martin, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Virginia Tech.

“It’s stainless steel yarn, and if I didn’t tell you it was stainless steal, you would swear it is some kind of fiber.”

Despite the wiring, the clothes are durable and wearable, according to Martin.

Tracking movement is the job of the garments. Paired with a device like a heart rate monitor, the e-textiles could provide valuable information for physical therapists, athletes and others.

The people at Tech are all about the fabric; what people use them for is wide open.

Graduate student Meghan Quirk has worked on the project since January of 2005. She considers e-textiles another example of how we are moving toward a more computer-centric society.

“I think the impact (of e-textiles) will be towards a more pervasive computing world,” she says in an email. “E-textiles are another part of this trend.”

And soon. Martin predicts that the product will be developed commercially within the next three to five years.

There are already some quirky ideas out there. For example, a woman in New York City has developed a dress that plays music. The music changes according to how a person is moving, Martin says.

Some companies are already selling e-textile products. Martin says his team is developing fabrics with a higher level of computing power than those already on the market.

He draws an analogy to the days when computers could only run one program at a time.

Right now, smart garments aren’t good at multi-tasking.

“If you want it to do more than one thing, you have to wear two or three shirts,” he says. “People aren’t going to wear two or three shirts.”