Health IT

The DoD allocates $75M for smart fabric research push

It will look at ways to integrate circuits, LEDs, solar cells to create smart fabrics to see, hear, communicate, store energy, regulate temperature, and monitor health

Source: Hexoskin

Source: Hexoskin

Research and development of smart fabrics got a boost from a Department of Defense plan to create a manufacturing innovation institute to develop innovative fabrics and new approaches to textiles manufacturing, according to a government statement. 

The Advanced Functional Fabrics of America, or AFFOA, Alliance is a nonprofit research and development consortium made up of 89 universities, manufacturers, and non-profits led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

U.S. Army Contracting Command — New Jersey Emerging Technologies will manage a fund which combines $75 million in DoD funds and nearly $250 million in cost sharing from non-federal investments .

The institute will explore work with fibers and yarns to integrate circuits, LEDs, solar cells, to create smart fabrics that can see, hear, sense, communicate, store energy, regulate temperature, monitor health, change color, the statement said. The research may also be used to establish lab standards for smart fabric research, according to  Genevieve Dion, director of Drexel’s Shima Seiki Haute Technology Lab in an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer.

In addition to universities, the companies that are part of the AFFOA are consumer facing groups such as Nike, North Face, Bose, Microsoft, Intel, and Flextronics.

Some of the funding will be allocated to a Mid-Atlantic research group chaired by Drexel, according to the article. Its regional partners include Temple University, Philadelphia University, and the MEDstudio at Thomas Jefferson University. Other Pennsylvania members include Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh and Penn State in State College.

There are several wearables companies such as Hexoskin, Motus Global, Bebop Sensors and Lumo Bodytech that have integrated sensors into athletic gear such as shirts, shorts, and shoes to help sports enthusiasts improve their performance by giving them feedback on things like cadence, hydration, fatigue. But there are also other interesting area of development such as combining electrically conductive thread with a passive radio frequency identification tag to monitor the health of pregnant women and track things like contractions through a smart belly band developed by Dion.

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