Fabric embedded with electronic sensors to monitor vital signs

The machine washable garments can be made to fit close to the body of the person wearing them, said the team at MIT who believe their breakthrough could be used for monitoring people who are ill, either at home or in the hospital, as well as athletes or astronauts.

Embedded sensor provides real time respiratory rate

"We can have any commercially available electronic parts or custom lab-made electronics embedded within the textiles that we wear every day, creating conformable garments," said Canan Dagdeviren, the LG Electronics Career Development Assistant Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT. "These are customisable, so we can make garments for anyone who needs to have some physical data from their body like temperature, respiration rate, and so forth."

Dagdeviren is the senior author of a paper describing the new material in npj Flexible Electronics.

"The textile is not electrically functional. It's just a passive element of our garment so that you can wear the devices comfortably and conformably during your daily activities," Dagdeviren said in a statement. "Our main goal was to measure the physical activity of the body in terms of temperature, respiration, acceleration, all from the same body part, without requiring any fixture or any tape."