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...