Integrating computers with textiles

摘要

T-shirts used as mobile phones sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but a research project led by Nottingham Trent University in the UK could turn such future-gazing tech into reality, according to scientists. The university’s Advanced Textiles Research Group (ATRG) has been given GB£1.3m to advance the technology that will pave the way towards the world’s first wearable computer. The project aims to create a manufacturing process to enable complex electronic circuitry to be embedded into yarns on an industrial scale. The research group, which has already pioneered technologies such as clothes embedded with solar cells to charge mobile phones, will develop the process for creating electronic yarns – or E-yarns – over the next three years. Professor Tilak Dias, who leads the ATRG in the university’s School of Art & Design, says: “This project will allow us to take a quantum leap towards seeing wearable E-textiles on the open market. “Complex E-yarns circuitry – which is undetectable to the wearer – will allow for the development of wearable electronics as sophisticated as computers.