Jason Ford
News editor
The days of visiting a mobile phone shop to buy or lease only a handset appear to be long gone, with so-called smartwatches and fitness trackers now part of the vendors’ inventory.
These are, of course, only two examples of wearable technology that sit in a market estimated in ‘Wearable Technology 2015-2025: Technologies, Markets, Forecasts’ to be worth $20bn in 2015 and almost $70bn in 2025.
The Engineer’s coverage of wearables dates back well over a decade and since then advances in areas including materials, wireless connectivity, and power sources have seen wearables applied in numerous circumstances where data can be obtained for the benefit of the wearer, be they athletes, soldiers, patients or, in one particular instance, horses.
Earlier today, The Engineer reported on how a team in Massachusetts has developed an application that allows users to navigate smartphone screens using Google Glass and head movements.
Designed for people with visual impairment, the team’s app is said to project a magnified image of the screen to the user’s Google Glass display. Images are sent via Bluetooth, and the user can interact with them by tapping on the stem of the Google Glass device.
A further advance in the broadly applicable area of wearables was highlighted last week too, where engineers in Japan report the creation of an ultrathin material embedded with electronics that could be used as a visual display for information including medical data.
The electronic skin consists of a protective film less than two micrometres thick that is made from alternating layers of inorganic silicon oxynitrite and organic parylene. Under this, transparent indium tin oxide (ITO) electrodes are attached to an ultrathin substrate.
Combining the electrodes with the film enabled the team to create polymer light-emitting diodes (PLEDs) thin enough to attach to skin, but flexible enough to adapt to body movement.
Later today, The Engineer will report on how experts at Fraunhofer in Germany have developed a novel transparent sensor material that facilitates movement-measuring sensors to be printed onto textiles.
The material will be one of many technologies to be presented on IDTechEX Europe taking place in between 27 and 28 April 2016.
ICTechEx Wearable Europe forms part of the Berlin-based conference and exhibition programme where delegates can attend master classes in printed electronics; conductive inks, film and transparent conductive film; e-textiles and stretchable electronics; plus electrically and thermally conductive adhesives.
ICTechEx Wearable Europe will take place this week at the Estrel Berlin Hotel and Convention Center, Germany.
How nice that our illustrious organ is starting to comment upon those within and upon our bodies! “The hand that rocks the shuttle rules the world.” As my boss in the USA (who himself knitted the first nylon stocking in 1937-ish I was not born!) used to say: “when you are born, the first thing they do is wrap you in textiles, when you die, the last thing they wrap you in textiles, and apart from when you are in the shower/bath, you will be touched by textiles.” ” When Adam wove and Eve spun…” And I am sure our bard (whose birthday was on saturday!) had many quotations to add. The idea of incorporating sensory textiles into functional clothing has a long history. Fellow bloggers might enjoy a short piece recently offered to a newspaper’s technology correspondent.
“Had a project, in the 80s to assist Gentex Inc (Carbondale, Pa. USA) in the design of a fully-contained 72 hour combat suit for US Special Forces. It had to have self-contained food, water input and waste! ejection systems, NBC and ballistic protection, built-in load carrying capabilities (pack supporting webbing incorporated into the outer fabric) camouflage, (visual and infra-red), full communications interfaces… and so on. The modern equivalent of a suit of medieval armour. At one point in our thinking we envisaged some future conflict where the ordinary soldiers of both sides would be so fully protected from each other that all they would have been able to do to attack would be to call each other rude-names over the radio.” I look forward to that happy day!
It reminds me of Star Trek, The Next Generation, where the line was, “We are the Borg, resistance is futile.”
Not only is resistance futile, now sensors can be installed to skin to allow measurement of skin resistance, measure breathing rate, and pulse, measure the saltiness of the perspiration, measure the state of the unmentionable, and also report the blood glucose reading. Certainly, it hearkens back to the 20th Century device once called a “lie-detector”. Sometimes, indeed, what is past is prologue.
James and I sing from the same hymn (do I mean that, there will surely be no need for such in the future as there will be no need for formal religious practices-whose secrets are retained by a few special persons. ) sheet. My point is that as long as both ‘sides’ are equally armed/protected the critical balance of fear or of friendship is held steady. But as they have invariably done in the past, the conflict (*)groups will surely find a way to encourage and then keep individuals, entities, the very States themselves pitted against each other. (*) Those who throughout history have not created ‘wealth’ themselves, but have developed ingenious ways to persuade others to employ ‘them’ -in order to be paid to do so? Unfortunately such is the sophistication (and cost) of the mechanisms we Engineers have provided for ‘their’ games these have become dominent elements of international finance.