Sunday, December 31, 2000		Article

Adding intelligence to our garments

LETTING children make as much mess as they like, allowing them to play in the mud-filled ground all day long and having their fill of chocolates and candies and still not having to bother about washing their clothes may seem to be a dream for every parent.

Well. Not any more.

For a chemical process developed by British scientists could, in the near future, lead manufacturers of garments to develop clothing that never gets dirty, says a report puhlished in The Independent, London.

The manufacturing secret developed by scientists of Durham University is every patent’s dream come true. According to Dr Jas Pal Badyai, director of the research programme, children wearing clothes made with the process could make as much mess as they like, yet remain clean and dry.

The treatment creates an invisible non-stick surface coating that repels water, grease and dirt. The helps the clothes spick and span despite constant exposure to the outside environment. Besides being useful for clothing, the process has hundreds of other applications, ranging from aircraft parts and ship hulls to bank notes and wall paper.

Additionally, British researchers are developing smart and intelligent clothes that can have unobtrusive gadgets sewn into their fabric. Incorporated features so far include a bikni with an integrated MP3 audioplayer, a shirt with its own mobile phone and ski jacket that warm up its wearer and tells skiers that are coming too close to back off. And for concerned parents there is a child’s T-shirt with built-in global positioning so their movements can be tracked.

The clothes follow two year’s research by a multi-disciplinary team at consumer electronic company Philips’ Redhill Laboratory in Surrey. By blending woven, knitted and printed fabrics with new conductive materials, the team has added intelligence to garments that still resemble traditional clothes. The clothes are also washable.

Until now, electronic clothes have needed wires to function and have not been washable. But these products are wire-free, soft to touch and can be powered by a small, removable 9-volt battery. Eventually it is hoped that heat from the body will be used to generate electricity for some applications.

Dr David Eves, team leader, says electronic clothing could be as important to the fashion industry as the bikni or mini-skirt. "People are already carrying around more and more electronic products, such as mobile phones, palm-top computers and personal hi-fis, so it makes perfect sense to start integrating them into our clothes" says Dr Eves.

Now, imagine a T-shirt that can programme music to suit your mood or a T-shirt that can sense the onset of an allergic reaction and administer the necessary medication immediately. An Indian-born US scientist, Dr Sundaresan Jayaraman, has taken smart technology to a new level bridging the gap between imagination and reality with the invention of the smart T-shirt.

Leading a team of engineers at Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Textile and Fibre Engineering, Dr Jayaraman has developed a technique to weave plastic fibre optics into a T-shirt, creating what he calls a "wearable computer motherboard". "This smart T-shirt, has changed the way we thought of computing", says team member, Dr Ranga Rajamanickam. "It has opened the frontiers for mobile computing".

Referring to the smart T-shirt as a mixture of both art and textile, Jayaraman calls it one of the genuine breakthroughs for the next century. Life magazine even featured it in a special edition called 21 breakthroughs that could change your life in the 21st century.

The military is studying the shirt’s possibilities for the battlefield. But because the technology behind the shirt is now available to the public, the $ 30 garment could be worn by nursing home patients, fire-fighters or police within months of a group’s request, says Jayaraman.

This flexible, wearable monitory device, has revolutionised the way information processing devices can be made to "fit" the wearer. Sensors can be plugged into the wearable motherboard, just like processors and microchips are plugged into a computer motherboard. Vital signs like the heart rate and temperature are monitored through these sensors, which are either woven into the shirt, or attached to the body. Information is analysed in a pager-size processor worn at the hip, from where the data is then transmitted via-satellite, anywhere in the world.

Newer scientific techniques are incorporating chemicals with desired properties into fabrics as they are made. The cool cottons, the manageable polyesters and the cosy woollens, all are getting a face-life. Many cloth manufacturers today are coming out with readymade garments that keep you away from sweat, dirt, odour and germs. There are shirts that kill mosquitoes.

French technologists believe that these he-tech clothes can soon replace the present ones. For instance, Du Pont has come out with a range of jackets and shirts from which dirt slips away keeping the attire clean. The damart company has developed sweat-free garments that keep away perspiration. This company also uses ceramics fibre impregnated with specific chemicals that kill mosquitoes on contact. An American scientist, Dr Tyrone Vigo, has developed garments to which bacteria cannot attach themselves. And if they do tag on, they cannot survive.

The Neyret Company offers a line of scented lingerie. Another French firm, Frantical, has promised to offer a lines of deodorising underwear in the year in the year 2002. The Clayeux Company offers a range of anti-bacterial pajamas, sweat shirts and jump suits. Acotdis Acrylic Fibre in Bradford, UK, have found a way to protect you from dust mites.

He-tech clothing is now being made using devices that assemble a fabric atom by atom. Basic elements such as Carbon, Hydrogen and Nitrogen are put together to make a variety of clothing. Very soon we shall have super clothes that not only adorn our body but also protect it like a second skin.

— Maharaj K. Koul