Smart Clothes

We’re used to interfacing with the Internet via a PC or handheld device, but in the next twenty years, the Web is going to make its way into our bedrooms, our bathrooms, and even our clothes.
The faint beginnings of this trend are all around us today. British Technology futurists Ian Neild and Ian Pearson have forecast that 60% of our mobile devices will be Internet accessible by the end of the decade. A firm called Textronics, has created undergarments and sports equipment that can monitor your vital signs. Nike is already marketing a shoe that lets you track your jogging route on Google Maps. And a Finnish company called EMFIT has developed a wireless sensing mattress that their government is using in hospitals and jails.

Industry watchers estimate that a $400 million market for Smart Fabrics and Interactive/Intelligent Textiles (SFIT) is already in place.
A U.K. designer named Jenny Tillotson has come up with one of the most interesting ideas yet, a fragranced fluidic fabric system that releases atomized bursts of perfume or cologne. In the years ahead, she hopes to combine the design with body-temperature sensors. Imagine if you could slightly adjust your scent depending on whether you were talking to someone you liked or someone you wanted to repel? Gives new meaning to the phrase "awkward encounter," doesn't it?

This trend toward ever more--and ever-more intimate--computing is making possible a future where we simply assume the presence of wired technology in almost everything with which we come in contact. By 2020, you'll be able to walk into any furniture store and buy a bed to monitor how you sleep. Your bathroom mirrors could inform you of your protein, iron, and cholesterol levels and share that information with other “smart” devices you'll interact with during the day, like your clothes.

On the downside, a lot of developments have to occur, mostly in other areas, before the smart-wear revolution can really spark. Your smart bed, smart kitchen, and smart pants might use a hundred different platforms to communicate with one another. For computers (at least those of today), dialoguing between platforms takes a lot of juice. It’s part of the reason why global energy use is expected to double in the next thirty to fifty years.

One idea for meeting this increased demand is tissue-thin solar film. In March 2007, the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory awarded United Solar Ovonic (www.uni-solar.com ) a $9.1 million grant to perfect "ultra lightweight solar arrays on thin stainless steel foils" to power satellites. If the film can be rendered light enough to attach to clothing, solar thin-film solar could provide smart apparel with a 1,000 watt per kilogram power source. Hydrogen fuel cells are another option for powering computer-laced clothes. But according to one industry expert I spoke with, "who would want to walk around with a hydrogen fuel cell on them, what with the potential explosiveness?" he asked.

Just goes to show, sometimes intelligence isn't everything.