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Technology

Another Look At High-Tech Fabrics 59

Posted by timothy from the please-don't-wet-the-cloth dept.
prostoalex writes "CSMonitor takes a look into wearable computing and digital fabrics. To quote the article, 'many anticipate [this sector] will become one of the next hot drivers of the American economy'." I find the Foster-Miller wearable cables an especially neat technology.
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Another Look At High-Tech Fabrics More

Another Look At High-Tech Fabrics

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  • Cool (Score:1)

    by neccoant ( 3345 )
    Those cables are cool. This tech seems a few more years off, though.
    • Oh yeah, this will be real cool, until the next time I'm driving through downtown Denver with a double gulp between my legs because it won't fit in any cup holder in the universe and I hit 1 of the 2 or so hundred pot holes on I-25 and dump said double gulp in my lap. Oh well, no more need to spring for Trojan® Cyber-Jans® after that, and more $ for OS Socks or whatever. :)

  • 80's/early 90's redux (Score:3, Interesting)

    by faeryman ( 191366 ) on Saturday August 31, 2002 @04:32PM (#4177739) Homepage
    The fabric contains electronic wires and tiny capsules of a special thermochromatic ink that get darker or lighter as they are heated or cooled.

    hehehe...just like HyperColor shirts [yesterdayland.com], except it's electronic.

    • I used to wear those and pretend I was the chameleon from Spiderman. Didn't matter that Chameleon changed face, not just colour, but then again, I was young!

      Then I realised the Chameleon got his ass kicked a lot so I stopped. The shirts also directly correlated to the wedgie ratio graph that I began drawing up on my Amiga. I believe the same is true for those who wear these things.

  • Yes, I can see why that would help the economy. I would love some intra-venal beer! (yes, I know)
  • So, how long before clothes catalogs list both size and resolution? And in high school will girls who wear tops with only 38 dpi be considered social outcasts?

    I think there will be quite a demand for hi-res bikinis.
  • But it's not REALLY good until it's under the skin. You won't leave it at home, and they can't take it away from you at the airport. Sensors could keep track of your position and posture, allowing you to watch yourself walk down the street like something out of tomb raider. These clothes with wires would only be worn by children, because they are still growing.
  • From a picture in the article:
    HUMAN WATTAGE: Infineon has developed a thermo-generator chip that can produce enough electricity to run a watch, using the difference between the body's temperature and the surrounding air.

    That sounds pretty awesome, up there with the self winding watch idea i think :P

    • That sounds pretty awesome, up there with the self winding watch idea i think :P


      Good point! Stupid watch will stop working after your body reaches room temp!
      How crapy is that, first you die then your watch stops working!
  • Damn it, the only thing holding us back from making just about everything portable is battery technology. These fabrics are great and all but come on, how long will my NiMH AA's power it?

    Wasn't a story posted a while back about the fabric using body heat to generate power? They mention "miniature thermogenerators" in this story, but it sounds suspiciously like vaporware to me.

  • ...I can't wait! Only trouble is six times a day your pants turn blue and fall down. I would add a belt but the EULA prohibits it.

    • Hey but you agreed to the EULA. That means that when the pants fall down, Microsoft reserves the right to bend you over and shove software up your ass without your further consent :-)

  • "I've been shot!"

    "Are you okay?"

    "Yeah, but I think it deleted my email."
  • ....until you get ripped apart at the airport like Steve Mann [slashdot.org].
  • I want one of those jackets from Back To The Future Part II, you know... the ones with the auto-dry feature and adjusting sleeves. Yeah, I want one of those.

  • Are these the switched fabrics I keep hear about:-?

  • connectivity (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jericho4.0 ( 565125 )

    Now what we need is a way to connect all these fabrics.

    What would be cool is a way to arbitraily address a paticular quality of a device (display,sound, shape...) or data(temputare,video, audio...) by location rather than specific device.

    Then our wearables could interact with our enviroment and other peoples wearables.

  • To quote the article, 'many anticipate [this sector] will become one of the next hot drivers of the American economy'."


    Yeah, this new technology will give our retail cashiers yet more cheap imported goods from China to ring up. WallMart might even have to do some entry level hiring to keep up with the demand. Also, don't forget our fast food industry, which will need to feed all of our service employees at some point in their three-jobs-to-make-ends-meet day.

  • Miniature thermogenerators can exploit the few degrees of difference between the outside temperature of the human body and the surrounding air by converting the heat into electrical energy, Dr. Weber explains.

    This one got me thinking... There must be a way to create an wearable air conditioner with this. Please Gods, let there be one! To use my very own body heat against itself to cool me!

    Ok, thinking about it... could a fabric like that work when the temperature is the same as body temperature?

    How would it work? Miniature compressors all over your body? It would be very rude to walk in to a hot room spewing heat, of course.

    Probably a pipe dream. What do I know. Just s programmer. Probably couldn't generate enough power. Anyone who knows better want to fill in the gaps?

    • Here's what would happen. The initial temp difference would power a generator, which would power internal cooling of you. this would decrease the temperature gradient through the clothing layer, decreasing the efficiency of the AC. but remember, the gadget is preventing heat from radiating away from you quickly, increasing your temp slightly. in the end, you'd not be able to get enough energy to cool down appreciably, and that energy would be from food, which is more expensive than duracells.

  • hazing (Score:1, Funny)

    by sstory ( 538486 )
    so in a strange turnabout, I suppose geeks would be hacking into Jocks' clothing and (cut-and-) pasting "Kick Me" "I suck" signs on their e-backs.
    just goes to show you, the future's unpredictable.
  • all those highschool principals back in the 80s could have just pushed out some new wallpaper to all those Spuds McKenzie/Big Johnson tee shirts. So many hours of detention, pages of disciplinary notes, etc. saved.

  • Luminex Fabric (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Saturday August 31, 2002 @06:01PM (#4178082) Journal
    Luminex [luminex.it] is interesting. It is a glowing fabric that can be cut, sewn [luminex.it], etc. Exotic, but odd in a slightly retro way. (videos also at the links)

    Of course, natural and/or synthetic fibres can be of any color. Fibres transmitting light are uncolored. They take the color of the light source which is connected to them.

    Now add in a couple of digital controls, and you'll be able to flash colors like a cuttlefish [pbs.org]

  • Hrm...so now, instead of being able to wear any one of my, say, 10 fairly-expensive jackets, I'll have to either wear the same one every day if I want all the technological doodads (I assume it'll be fairly expensive) or bite the bullet and replace my wardrobe? The wardrobes! Oh, won't somebody please think of the wardrobes!

  • fashion trends (Score:2, Funny)

    by sstory ( 538486 )
    And if the eClothes followed familiar interface trends, the Mac clothes would look cute and stylish, the Windows clothes would look functional, and the Linux clothes would look like they were designed by 15-yr olds with poor color sense. But the clothes of some linux-wearers with the perverse command line fetish would be black, with a little bit of white.
  • ... to make them transparent!
  • It's about time that pants tried to regain their market share. I am all for crazy digital pants. Maybe then, they'll have a chance to compete with the Homeworld engine. [relicnews.com]

  • "Infineon Technologies, a major semiconductor productmaker, has helped develop an experimental jacket with an integrated MP3 player."

    Upon reading this, my first thought was "If I had one of these things, I'd be sure to accidentally wash the damn thing and ruin it." On another note, couldn't you already just sew an mp3 player into any jacket? I don't see a huge amount of improvement here, and I really wonder why they bothered to include that into the article. Though, I can't say that I'd mind having one powered by body heat..

  • Hey, I've got an idea! If we can use nanotech biomaterials to make these high-tech fabrics link to the Internet via wireless, we can have the ultimate KILLER PRODUCT. The Buzz Shirt -- using five buzzword-based technologies! Just think of all the spam ads that will ripple across the back of it as you walk down your decaying inner city! Just think, the shirt will twitch when you pass another "Help Wanted $7/HR" sign! It'll be awesome to be hip and trendy while you slap the pavement looking for a job.

    Sarcasm aside, I defecate (with Norden-bombsight precision) from a great distance above this idea's hype. The only thing here that is going to "hot drive" the economy is more of the same overinvestment in an idea with limited application.

    (Invest early, invest often -- you have decades to work like a dog to recoup your losses.)
  • The best things to come of this will be things like a coat that would notify you when threatening weather was approaching or a jacket that could monitor a pacemaker that could monitor your heart rate.

    Or how about a bulletproof vest for police that sent an emergency signal to the dispatcher if a seal is broken (shot fired). Maybe even tennis shoes for kids that could help authorities locate the child if they were lost/kidnapped.

  • Self-cleaning clothes? Think Alec Guinness... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hyacinthus ( 225989 ) on Saturday August 31, 2002 @08:19PM (#4178490)
    ...playing _The Man in the White Suit_, one of the old Ealing comedies from the fifties. Guinness plays a scientist who comes up with a fabric which doesn't wear out and doesn't ever stain or get dirty. He ends up in hot water both with the textile and clothing manufacturers who don't like the idea of garments that don't need constant replacement, and with the textile workers' unions because they're afraid that Guinness's invention is going to put them out of work. Complications ensue.

    hyacinthus (who thinks the whole idea of wearing a computer or even carrying one in a pocket is pretty daft. Even my watch is mechanical--and it's lasted about twice or three times as long as any digital watch I've owned.)
  • So what does this have to do with Christian Science exactly?

    -a
    • So what does this have to do with Christian Science exactly?
      Your question is equivalent to asking whether some arbitrarily selected article on /. is for nerds.

      Surely it is safer to assume that many Christian Scientists (and many nerds) have some interest in the wider world which the editors of their targeted news services might sometimes attempt to make allowance for.

      Just to get this back somewhere near on topic, I have long felt smart fabrics could be the killer app for nanotechnology ... to the point of making a serious start on a sci fi manuscript exploring such possibilities more than a decade ago.

      It is not too hard to imagine redundancy and even self repair built into wearable systems.

      What is a bit harder is the how we get there from here question, especially when we don't seem to be able to see a way past worrying about crumpling optical fibres.
    • The Christian Science Monitor may be from a bunch a religious zealots originally, but it is one of the better newspapers these days, trying to be very even handed with the editorial.
  • Need I say more?

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