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Future smart clothing

Jan 2001

The military have experimented with some interesting new types of clothing over the last few years. One development involves clothes which can change their thickness and therefore thermal properties according to the outside temperature. Another splashes medicines onto a wound when a soldier is hit by a bullet. But we are also seeing some use of optical fibres woven into the clothes. When a soldier is injured, the fibres are broken and information about the wound location can be relayed to field medics, who can use the information to prioritise casualties. Obviously, other sensors could be used to monitor blood loss, pulse etc and this information could be relayed too.

Millions of micro-capsules can also be built into clothing and allow camouflage to adapt dynamically to the surroundings, changing the colour and pattern of the clothes. Such effects can be achieved in a variety of ways, by flattening or stretching capsules to change their colour characteristics, or using electrical charge or physical pressure. But today’s high tech camouflage technology may eventually become street fashion, with kaleidoscopic clothing.

But screen technology is moving on too and manufacturers are not far from flexible polymer screens that could be built into clothes. Imagine a T-shirt which has a video display panel where the logo should be. Instead of static prints, you could walk around showing video clips, perhaps from a TV tuner on your belt, or you could be showing accompanying video-clips while dancing to music at a night club. Smaller panels could be built into sleeves or legs. You could have a wristwatch in your shirt sleeve.

As plastic conductors become commonplace over the next few years, a wide variety of flexible gadgetry can be built into clothes – cell-phones, radios, diaries, shopping terminals, electronic cash, identification chips, even computers. Communications between the various devices could use fibres built into clothes, but that would limit their coverage to a single garment unless connectors were used to link garments together. Another technique uses the body itself to transmit signals at surprisingly high data rates, megabits per second.

Sensor technology will allow clothes to monitor health. A modified wristwatch is already available that can record a heartbeat for 30 seconds and download the recording through a telephone to the hospital. Of course, such devices could be built into a shirt to record the heart all day and signal the hospital immediately if something is amiss. Doctors will thus be able to carefully monitor patients without keeping them in hospital. Wearable devices to monitor blood pressure, blood sugar level, stress and many other health indicators will all become much more common than today. We may even see monitors for mental activity and emotional state.

Body suits are already used for virtual reality based applications, using sensors all over the body to detect movements. Vibration and pressure devices can be used to output information to the wearer. Some day, maybe as early as 2015, wearable electronics will be able to link directly to peripheral nerves to produce tactile sensations directly. In conjunction with appropriate displays and earphones, immersive applications could become almost indistinguishable from reality, Total Recall technology.

Power supply is a big problem today since battery technology has not progressed at the same rate as other information technologies, but various tricks have been mastered by mobile equipment manufacturers. Low power chips, battery management and power management systems, low power reflective light displays, and even shoes that can generate electricity have been invented. We may soon see common use of fuel cells and possibly solar power, maybe even built into clothing again. We have to hope that development is swift, or we may also be carrying a rucksack full of batteries.