When you think of advanced futuristic clothing, what comes to mind?
Perhaps shirts that can detect and alert users to low blood glucose levels or socks that can track your running form, step count and speed? What about pajamas that monitor subtle bodily changes while you sleep, leading to early detection of cancer or warn caregivers of imminent seizures? Imagine if all these were items that required no external power source, just the energy generated by your own body.
Although these products are not in stores yet, that day is not far off.
Researchers are already designing advanced textiles that look exactly like regular clothes or fabrics but come with embedded electronic functions. These are referred to as electronic textiles, e-textiles or smart fabrics.
E-textiles integrate sensing, computation and power into fabrics so that the threads themselves become the sensors and the stitches become the circuits. These textiles can monitor health, temperature, motion and air quality. They can communicate wirelessly and harvest various forms of energy.
