"Did You Know..."

I realize this isn't necessarily about Interactive Textiles, but it is something worth looking at nonetheless.




Thanks to Winston for pointing it out (this is version 2.0 by the way)...

Nanotextiles & Intelligent Textiles

I was in Prague last week for the Nanotextiles and Smart/Intelligent Textiles conferences. As was expected, the people I met there was certainly worth more to me than seeing the actual talks. Also, cheers to Pira-Intertech for doing a great job running the event -- I was more than skeptical but I was pleasantly surprised at the attendees and the talks.

Hopefully the SmartFabrics conference in Charleston, SC will live continue to live up to its high expectations. More to come on the Prague talks...

Flexible Electronics and Interative Textiles

Flexible Electronics -- probably as ambiguous as "interactive-textiles" or "intelligent textiles" or any other buzz word of the day. But did you know that this industry is not only solving the hard problems that can enable interactive textile applications, but that they're gaining the momentum of a multi-billion dollar industry? How you ask? They're riding the coat-tails of the display industry. Big-screen flat panel LCD TV's are becoming cheaper because the industry learning how to process large areas more effectively (the bloated costs of yesterday are primarily an artifact of poor yeild on the line).

So then you could ask "well if the interactive textiles industry is following the trails blazed by the wildly popular ipod, why is it so much smaller and less popular?" There are several answers but essentially it boils down to the market dynamics behind the ipod. Yes the ipod is popular, but it was developed privately by one company. TV's are commoditized and the display industry as a whole is open with government funded consortiums. With time the interactive textiles industry could grow at rates that rival the display industry, but maybe the application space needs to expand beyond the ipod or iphone.

That notion aside, let's talk about why flexible electronics is vitally important to interactive-textiles as a whole. The primary reason is the advantage that flexible electronics can provide from an integration perspective. Integrating electronics into textiles is difficult enough but having to use standard bulky electronics (and packaging) can reduce the flexibility and x-factor of "feel" in the final products. Secondly, as flexible electronics matures, the roll-to-roll paradigm becomes more realistic. In the roll-to-roll paradigm, interactive-textiles can now be realized through making the textiles the host substrate. We're really only skimming the surface of what's possible, what do you think?

Aussies funding Energy Shirt

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia going to be putting some big money toward a shirt for soldiers to wear that will scavenge and store energy.

It is good to see some federally funded efforts again, hopefully they'll have more success than we did here in the states. But it looks like what they're doing is a new direction that what's been done in the past decade -- that's generating/scavenging energy and then storing it on the body.

It will be interesting to see how efficiently the transducers will be able scavenge energy from the soldier's movement -- we probably all remember the whole "heel-strike PZT" debacle from a few years ago.

But I think there is reason to be optimistic; new nanotechnology is enabling scavenging with nanowires that may prove to offer a more efficient means of drawing power (if it can be scaled). Let's just hope that at the end of the day it actually decreases the amount of weight these soldier's have to carry -- not just distribute the load...

Virus Extrusion

If you haven't read the article on Angela Belcher's work at MIT, please read it here. Since I know a lot of attention is being paid to photonic textiles these days, this technology could be especially useful. The basic idea is this: quantum dots are functionalized to attach themselves to virus strands at strategic locations and the mixture is extruded into solution (very similar to wet spinning). Quantum dots can do several cool things (see below) - but that's not the point. The point is that these guys have enabled self-assembly on the molecular level that exceeds what can currently be done through polymerization.

The resulting fiber is analogous in tensile strength to nylon which means that it could be possibly spun and woven/knitted.

The applications listed in the write-up are the usual suspects or fiber batteries and solar cells, but there is so much more that could be done. Scalability will certainly be an interesting challenge. What are some other functional components that could be used with the virus assembly method?

Hambone

No, not the morbidly obese man that graced the talk-shows of the 1990's ... but the Bio-Acoustic Gesture Interface. Check out the video from youtube:


These guys from Georgia Tech have developed an interface for wearable systems that could offer a great tool for several applications. This is a cool area and there are several ways this could interact with other nascent technologies...

Do People Get It?

This question was posed at the e-textile symposium at the IFAI expo -- so what's the answer? As in most cases, it depends on who you're talking to. What I'm beginning to find is that for the most part the answer is "NO." Does anyone have a good answer as to why that is?

Let's look at it from the outsider's perspective. What is most outsider's interaction with this area? They might stumble upon a story such as the one in technologyreview.com while looking for something else, or maybe they see a news piece on TV, or perhaps they see one of the few products on the shelf. If that were your exposure to the technology area what would be your take-away?

Let's take a close look at the article on technologyreview.com called "Weaving Batteries Into Clothes." Not a bad article -- not too much hype, it is just discussing the fact that Natick Soldier Center is building their own fiber line that will leverage the technology that Hills has had for some years now.

Batteries would be only one POSSIBLE application of the technology. Why? Because the technology enables 3 different components to be extruded into the same fiber. That is all that is being said. However if you look at the comment section for the article, people either clearly don't get it, or are shooting the idea down. No one is saying, "with this capability I could do _________!"

How can we exploit this technology to enable a NEW capability?

Textronics Shares Lessons Learned

In the e-textiles symposium held at the IFAI Expo today, Textronics gave a great talk about lessons learned from a product launch. While there are several case studies on product launching, Textronics is really the first company to launch a total "e-textiles" product into the market (vs. components). Among the lessons shared by Textronics was the importance of forging relationships with retailers, proper budgeting for product sampling, and launching a line vs. launching a singular product. Probably the most important take-away from the lessons learned was the point made about turning competitors into collaborators.

The climate of the market and community is changing now and people are realizing the importance of companies like Textronics and Eleksen. Their success can help the rest of the community make in-roads to the mass market from their niche markets. Lot's of other talks going on, more to come...

E-Textiles @ IFAI

Looks like we're getting set to meet again and discuss "e-textiles" at the IFAI symposium this week. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, e-textiles is "electronic textiles" or "electrotextiles."

Back in 2001 with the relative success of Georgia Tech's SmartShirt thru DARPA's Defense Science Office, another program was started that would delve deeper into the enabling technologies of e-textiles, it was of course called "e-textiles." For a combination of reasons this program never took off, but there was some good work done at the seedling level.

Years have past and technology has progressed -- I look forward to seeing what comes to light at the IFAI Symposium on Wednesday...should be interesting...

That shirt is the bomb, yo!

Apparently, an "art-project" worn by an MIT student at Boston's Logan International Airport (both known for their sense of humor) has landed the student in hot water. In all seriousness -- where is the art in this? Aside from that, where is technology in this?

According to the news story on yahoo, this girl had the wires attached to play-dough as well as the bread-board. Why would you use play-dough unless you are hoping someone will mistake it for C4? Then when questioned her about her shirt she walked away (not a good move). Again, what exactly is being "shown off" in this "art-project?" The fact that you can light up LEDs on a circuit board with a 9-Volt? Let me alert MENSA.

Bottom line: don't group real innovation together with boneheads hoping to create hype and headlines. The motto "Socket To Me" will prove to be a self-fulfilling prophecy for her it seems.

WANTED: evidence of use

If you can find someone on the streets (a real person, not an employee of the company) carrying a bag like this:


Or even a suit like this:


We will personally send you a "Patchwerks" t-shirt. It's not that we don't want to see these types of applications -- we're just wondering who's driving the train here: the consumer or the good-idea fairy? Email Us!

The $3039.87 Conference!

Alright! Along with football season we're kicking off the fall conference season! And there's a bunch of events on the horizon, so where should you get your boss to send you? Let's look at the choices:

IFAI Tradeshow and Symposium -- October 2007
International Symposium on Wearable Computers -- October 2007
The Fiber Society, Fall Technical Symposium -- October 2007
Intertech Pira's 2007 Smart Textiles and Nanotextiles Conference -- December 2007

There are others, but let's look at these to get a broad spectrum.

First is the IFAI Expo, with admission to the trade show and the technical symposiums (E-Textiles and Battlefield Textiles) for $429. This is easily the best bargain of the bunch. For only $429 you get a full day of talks and open access to all the exhibits and of course all the participants. Plus the diversity of the attendees ensures that you'll exchange business cards with someone you've never met.

Next the 2007 ISWC. I'd love to go to this one, but it's a bit expensive and in an expensive city. The upside to its hefty cost is that it is a totally different crowd than most conferences. It's certainly a more academic and theoretical audience vs. the normal corporate crowd. At roughly $800 (plus the cost of spending a couple days in Boston) you'd have to be heavily immersed in this technology to make it worth you while.


Then there's the Fiber Society's Fall Technical Meeting. Again a pretty expensive conference (~$800), but I think that this one is WELL worth it. The tough part is finding time to make all the talks of interest (as many overlap). Despite being largely academic, this will still have a great mix of industry, government, and academics. If you truly want to be at the front-edge of technology, this is the place to be. Granted, some of the talks and posters can be more science than technology, this is still the best place to spot what's on the horizon and see who's bringing it to the fore-front.


And lastly we have Intertech Pira's Smart Textiles and Nanotextiles Conference. To attend you'll only have to pay....$3039.87 (at today's exchange rate). Let's look at what you get for your $3k:
1) 3 days of "overview" talks;
2) Finger-food at 2 receptions, possibly an open bar;
3) Prague in December (~28 degrees - F)!



I understand that these guys have overheads to pay -- but you have to remember that some of us have actually held these confereces before and we know how much they cost. One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of us are either bootstrapping or have a "severely" limited travel budget. I plan on going to a couple of these, and I will review them as I attend.

Tell me if there are any conferences that I've missed!

DIY interactive textiles and Web 2.0?

Why is the Web 2.0 such a big deal?

User-driven content. The notion of the web being a tool instead of a destination is what is driving the applications compiling Web 2.0. This idea is catching on in other areas of our lives to include our personal area network (PAN). Specifically, our PAN is the way we surround ourselves with devices to interact with various forms of media and information (phone, iPod, PDA, GPS, etc). For a while now companies have searched for ways to create a market out of this -- most recently there has been success in riding the iPod's coat-tails (via bags, jackets, etc.) This is incredibly hard to do because they've been thinking about the products as just that -- final products. What Eleksen is doing is providing a platform and a set of tools to configure your own PAN. For a good example, think of a high-end iPod jacket (~$500) vs. the Eleksen DIY kit (~$60 with all pieces).
This distributes the integration cost out to the consumer while allowing the consumer to customize his/her own product. This creates a user-pull that wasn't available to companies in the past -- much the way open-architecture did for software companies.

I am going to jump on the bandwagon and design my own iPod clothing -- and I encourage you too as well. Please send in pics of your creations using the DIY kits and let's see who can create the most innovative system. I'll post mine as I begin developing. Step 1 is for me to buy the kit...

next stop vegas!

That's right, I will be attending the IFAI Expo in October, specifically for the E-Textiles symposium.

There are a handful of talks geared toward the state of the market (most notable Eleksen). I am hoping that the talks are not all fluff and that a good bit of insight can be drawn from the talks. Since one of the biggest challenges in moving away from discrete electronics lies in the processing and power, it would be great to see more talks on these subjects. Solicore will talk about flexible power sources

Which I think will be key in the future -- solar can only offer so much and conventional batteries are bulky and heavy. There are other companies in this arena such as ITN Energy Systems and Superior Micro Powders. If you are attending the show/symposium drop us a line and let us know!!

OR Show = Eye Opening (revised)

So in walking the floor of the OR Show last week I was hoping to see a lot of cool products featuring smart-fabrics or some e-textiles...but there was very few to say the least. I saw a couple of jackets with iPod controllers, some PV bags, and one or two heating garments -- but that is all. Granted, this was the "summer" show so I would expect to see more at the "winter" show in January. However, in getting to talk to some of the companies it became clear that a lot still has to be done on the S&T side and manufacturability before the price points on these types of products can be lowered. Westcomb had a couple of iPod jackets with soft-shell configurations, but they were VERY expensive.
(upwards of $400!!...A more extensive review can be found here)

So here is my question: What will it take to bring down the price on these products? I'm thinking it isn't so much the electronics (although that is a big portion) as much it is the makeup of the garments they're integrated into (Gore, Event, etc) -- I believe the way the market stands now, only the high end pieces can absorb the added labor/materials involved in the electronics integration...

OR Show

If you have the means, I highly suggest attending the Outdoor Retailer Show starting Thursday in Salt Lake City.

I plan on attending and I will post a brief review of interesting products, trends, and people that I see at the show. I think there is a small fee (~$30) or something if you're not a buyer. More to follow...

Change is Good

My how my view has changed...I gave a talk last year at SmartFabrics 2006 on Large Area Antennas and the "Cognitive Body Suit" idea that was being kicked around DARPA at the time. If you had the chance to see my talk, it sounded a bit preachy -- but I still agree with the general message of "pull based on applications and user needs rather than tech push." I'm also still optimistic about the potential for electrotextiles and smart-fabrics in general.

However, having had first-hand experience with end-users, the acquisition process, and the DoD's overall beaurocracy I have a slightly more pessimistic view of the future direction for the technology. Mainly, I no longer believe that the military can be a market-driver for electrotextiles or smart-fabrics. Secondly, some of the proposed applications in my talk were extremely naive in hindsight (MANPACK and FFW kind of stuff).

I am excited to see some of the newer products hitting the market and I am still extremely optimistic...but am I the only one? What's your take?

Whatever happened to Nike+Philips?

Nike was once looked to as a potential end-user for the interactive textile community that could help us gain momentum by bringing new technologies into the mainstream. Aside from backpacks, where is Nike integrating these technologies?

Is there a specific reason that Nike never came out with the Philips-partnered jacket we saw at SmartFabrics 2005? What about the rest of the collaboration? The website www.nike-philips.com is a clear divergence with only links going separate directions (to either Nike or Philips).





Are there lessons the community can take away from their direction shift?

"Market Leader?"

Is there enough of an interactive textiles market in place to identify a market leader? Since only a handfull of companies actually have a product "on shelves" and high degree of segmentation it can be like comparing apples and oranges...Even still, it could be fun to look at...


Is it Textronics?



Textronics is among a small group of companies that has a total product solution that can be bought currently (sports bra and running shirt for HR monitoring).


Is it Eleksen?


The component supplier is realizing a fair amount of success in supplying interfaces for iPod-related products. Are they the "foot in the door" for our community or will new interfaces such as the iPhone make such products a "fad?"

What do you think? Who am I leaving out?