Researchers turn clothes into electronic displays

The breakthrough has been made by researchers from the Holland’s Holst Centre, Belgium headquartered imec, and CMST, imec’s associated lab at Ghent University.

Wearable devices such as healthcare monitors and activity trackers are quite common, but to date they haven’t been integrated into clothing. Doing so will make wearable devices less obtrusive and more comfortable, encouraging people to use them more regularly and increase the quality of data collected. A key step towards realising wearable devices in clothing is creating displays that can be integrated into textiles to allow interaction with the wearer.

“Wearable devices allow people to monitor their fitness and health so they can live full and active lives for longer. But to maximise the benefits wearables can offer, they need to be able to provide feedback on what users are doing as well as measuring it. By combining imec’s patented stretch technology with our expertise in active-matrix backplanes and integrating electronics into fabrics, we’ve taken a giant step towards that possibility,” said Edsger Smits, senior research scientist at Holst Centre.