A cut above

From solar-powered bikinis that charge your iPod, to wearable games and his’n’hers LED jackets, visitors to the recent Siggraph show in San Diego were given a glimpse of an exciting future where clothes are much more than something we wear to keep warm.

But despite almost a decade of hype, stoked by a hectic events calendar offering regular previews of the wardrobe of the future, real-world applications of smart clothing are remarkably thin on the ground. In commercial terms, the business has not amounted to much more than MP3 controls in jackets.

Finally though, reality is beginning to catch up with the vision, and a range of new applications and technologies suggest intelligent garments that are comfortable, washable, and useful may be heading for our clothes hangers soon. The emergence of these new technologies has been given added impetus by claims that in the face of low-cost competition from India and the far east, smart clothing is the beleaguered European textile industry’s best hope of survival.

One of the most exciting areas for smart textiles is in healthcare, where the marriage of fabric and electronics is leading to the development of wearable, non-invasive systems for monitoring patients’ conditions.

A chief innovator in this area — Italian firm Smartex — last year launched a shirt able to monitor the electrical activity of the heart. Developed under an EU research Wearable Health Care System (Wealthy) project, it is woven from electrodes made of stainless steel wires twisted around a viscose yarn. It sounds uncomfortable but, according to Smartex, because the wires are so fine, the material feels like cotton or polyester. It can also be cleaned in a washing machine.

Dr Rita Paradiso, Smartex research director, said the company is now poised to take the technology a step closer to commercialisation with a follow-on project called Healthwear, in which three hospitals will evaluate and test the performance of 50 garments.

Similar technology has been developed by US firm Textronics, which has developed a fabric-based system for monitoring heart rates and measuring respiration. The material is based on the company’s so-called Textro-Yarns; comfortable, washable, elastic, conductive composite yarns that can be knitted and weaved into clothing. Earlier this year the company launched an exercise vest for men under its NuMetrex brand.

Meanwhile, Smartex is taking part in the €3.1m (£2.1m) EU-funded Biotex project, which hopes to increase further the potential of wearable monitoring systems through the development of smart fabrics capable of analysing bodily fluids.

Talking to The Engineer in June, project co-ordinator Jean Luprano, of Swiss R&D firm CSEM, explained that through integrating optical, electrochemical and electronic sensors, the Biotex consortium hopes to develop textiles that can monitor bodily fluids such as blood, urine and sweat.

Paradiso said Smartex’s role in the project is to tackle the problems of integrating biochemical sensors with textiles and handling liquid collection. Luprano said that as well as being used for remote monitoring of vitals signs, such a system could also be used to improve early illness detection and the identification of metabolic disorders.

While Biotex gathers pace, Smartex is just one of a number of Italian firms dipping its toes in the smart fabrics industry. With its strong tradition of engineering excellence and historical links with the international fashion industry, Italy seems to provide a fertile climate for smart fabric development.

The burgeoning relationship between the textile business and the world of high technology is neatly exemplified by the activities of Grado Zero Espace; a hi-tech spin-off from Italian clothing manufacturer Karada Italia that specialises in the transfer of materials from the space industry into high-performance clothing.