The impact of the Internet of Things across various industries has been well-documented, but how about fashion? If you’ve ever lamented the lack of connectivity in your sweater, then smart clothing is definitely for you.
Combining IoT with fashion makes a lot of sense, as it takes advantage of objects that we have on us all the time. At the moment, the industry for wearable’ technology has mostly focused on smartwatches, but IoT has huge untapped potential in the fashion industry.
Health
One major potential use of smart clothing is as a health accessory, utilising our clothes to monitor and measure the wearer’s health. In March 2018, tech startup Emglare announced that they are developing a line of smart clothes that include an ECG and heart rate sensor. The smart clothing will send this data straight to your phone through an app, allowing you to analyse your health closely.
While you can expect to see Emglare smart clothes in the near future, another tech company is taking the concept of wearable tech a little bit further.
Frogtech is predicting that drones will be the future of wearable devices, and are working on a number of concepts including a small oval drone called Breathe, that will rest on its owner’s shoulder’. The drone will monitor air pollution, launching from the shoulder to provide fresh filtered air by hovering in front of the user’s mouth.
Sport
Smart clothing also has major implications for sports, particularly football. The rise of data analytics in football has developed the game considerably, and in the future this could be enhanced even further.
Smart clothing such as those being developed by Emglare could be used to collect data on players’ fitness levels during a match, allowing coaches to see each player’s work rate, and decide if they need to be substituted.
Football boots could also be fitted with embedded sensors that measure every step, and allow analysts to measure the strength and angle of impact with the ball.
Power
In addition to collecting data, smart clothes could also be used to harvest and generate power, either through solar cells or kinetic energy. Researchers in Japan are currently working on solar cells which would be installed directly into clothing. While existing solar panels are too rigid and cumbersome to be effective in clothing, the solar cells as so small and pliable that they can be woven into clothing like any other fabric.
At just three millionth of a metre thick, these innovative solar cells are specially designed to absorb light, while simultaneously resisting water and air. The concept is still under development, however, and won’t be commercially available for a few years.
Similarly, another team of German researchers have built shoe-sized devices that generate power from both the foot hitting the ground, and when the foot swings. While the energy this device generates is pretty small at the minute, the concept could be developed in the future and offers an exciting glimpse into the huge range of applications for smart clothing.