At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), scientists have developed smart clothes for motion detection to be used in athletic training, rehabilitation, and health monitoring.
Among the many benefits promised by the smart fabric, the revolution has been the “consumerization of health care.” Wearables enable the remote monitoring of a wide range of chronic medical conditions, from diabetes, high blood pressure, and congestive heart failure (CHF) to symptoms of disease, discomfort, and stress.
In 2017, smart fabrics in the medical and health segment had a market size of $97 million, according to IFAI research. The MIT team has developed a range of prototypes, from socks and gloves to a full vest. The team’s “tactile electronics” use a mix of more typical textile fibers alongside a small amount of custom-made functional fibers that sense pressure from the person wearing the garment.
The team’s clothes have a range of capabilities. Their socks predict motion by looking at how different sequences of tactile footprints correlate to varying poses as the user transitions from one pose to another.
The full-sized vest can also detect the wearers’ pose, activity, and texture of the contacted surfaces. The scientists feel a coach can use the sensor to analyze people’s postures and improve improvement. An experienced athlete could also use it to record their posture so that beginners can learn from them. They even imagine that robots could be trained to know how to do different activities using data from the wearables in the long term.
