Wearables haven’t really caught on yet but there’s still hope for smart clothing considering that there isn’t a social stigma associated with wearing what would look like a normal garment to the untrained eye. Albeit a garment capable of doing some pretty amazing things. The problem has been creating durable materials to get the job done. Something that proved troublesome. Until now.
As Futurism puts it:
“Designers of smart garments have a vision: that we’ll come to use electronics woven into the clothes we wear not just as dazzling new ways to express ourselves, like the light-up prom dress that went viralin 2017, but as extensions of our digital lives that could collect biometric data or even grant wearers superhuman senses.
The problem is that today’s old-fashioned textiles are already the result of thousands of years of innovation, and versions that incorporate wearable computing tech need to be just as hardy. Smart garments will have to be resilient in the face of everything from wash-and-fold to sweaty workouts, not to mention as long-lasting as a trusty t-shirt.
One key challenge has always been creating conductive wires that can carry current between components in a smart garment without breaking down over time as it flexes, twists, and gets wet. Now, Chinese scientists say they’ve invented a new type of self-assembling silver nanowire, inspired by the capillaries in your cardiovascular system, that could be the most practical attempt yet.”
Hopefully, this means that 2019 is finally the year that wearables make it big.
Is 2019 the year that smart clothing makes it big?
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