As we understand that conductive textiles in the form of fibres, yarns, fabrics, finishes, and more, are the building blocks for E-textile enabled smart garments, it’s time to learn about the commercial players which offer product range in this field. The previous article of this series focused on few of the conductive textile manufacturers. Now let us move across the globe to get acquainted with the product developers who have integrated these conductive textiles in the most fascinating ways possible to come up with Smart Garments. The major focus here would be to introduce the readers with the companies rather than their products as succeeding articles of this series on Smart Garments will elaborate on several products based on varied applications. So, let’s take a tour…..
AiQ, a smart clothing company based in Taipei, Taiwan started its journey as the Innovation Group, an innovator of stainless steel fibre based woven fabric used for automotive glass applications. It is one of the pioneer companies in converting textiles into smart clothing by fusing them with semiconductors to add connectivity to the product. AiQ considers smart clothing and e-textiles as a component of the IoT network. With this ethos, it has progressed its journey in this field leading to development of several smart products. Nadia Kang, Chief Marketing Officer for AiQ Smart clothing was selected as one of the top 100 Women of Wearable and Consumer Tech by Women of Wearable, a UK based organisation which aims at promoting and connecting women in wearable tech, fashion tech, IoT and AR/VR. AiQ also represented the smart clothing industry at a special exhibition in 2020 organised by the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago. Companies, institutions and designers from 15 countries were invited to showcase the technology enabled wearables beyond the mainstream products like smart watches. AiQ installation at the exhibition included smart clothing solutions fusing semiconductors, conductive stretchable textile cables for acquiring bio-signals, to be used in athleisure, rehabilitation clothing, etc. BioMan+ and AiQSynertial are few of the most talked about products from the company. They offer the option of purchasing the products directly from the company website. The company also provides design and consulting services in the area of smart clothing.
Next from the east is Xenoma, a smart garment company founded in 2015, spin-off from the University of Tokyo. It has named its technology as e-Skin which it uses to develop smart garments for well-being. It also has an online presence for its products to be bought directly from the company website. The product range includes e-skin Sleep & Lounge, EMStyle, MEVA, LETS WALK, ECG shirt and more. EMstyle is a whole body-suit which monitors your 20 minutes work out, evaluates the same and provides the results through an application which is connected to the body suits wirelessly. It enables remote training as well. MEVA is another set of garments which enables biomechanics research by tracking natural body movements. It claims not to be working on the principle of geomagnetism, thus the results remain unhindered even in the presence of interfering magnetic fields. Sleep and Lounge is a range of loungewear meant for remote monitoring of body vitals and developed specially for adult care. It can also detect dangerous trips and falls. These products have really been making sense during the era of social distancing and would continue to do so.
E-skin MEVA-L (Lower body tracking)
CuteCircuit, based in London, and founded in 2004 by designers Ryan Genz and Francesca Rosella is known to utilise wearable technology to create interactive fashion garments. The Hug ShirtTM and the Sound ShirtTM are two popular products from its studio. SoundshirtTM was named in Time’s list of the 100 best inventions of 2020. Though called a ‘shirt’, it is a body hugging knitted suit which is enabled with haptic sensors. The haptic sensor sends different kinds of vibrational motions based on the nature of sound waves/signals received by the receptor. This helps the hearing impaired audience to enjoy music along with the hearing audience at a concert and elsewhere as well. In a similar manner, Hug ShirtTM has another interesting concept of sending hugs remotely without coming in physical contact. It is embedded with actuators that create the sensation of touch and emotion of a hug. Special projects by CuteCircuit have provided an engaging experience of smart garments enabled interactive fashion in the Haute Couture segment showcasing through singer Katty Perry, Laura Paussini and Nicole Scherzinger, violinist Sally Potterton and also through collaborative projects with companies like Mercedes (for Automotives) and Converse (for Footwear).
Based in Toronto, Canada, Myant is a wearable tech company founded in 2010. It believes that e-textile enabled sensors and actuators integrated in the smart wearables would allow human beings to build better connections with themselves and those near them. Thus coming with the trademarked punchline – Textile ComputingTM. So textile is treated analogously to the processor and human body to the operating system in a computing environment. Myant exclusively manipulates textiles through knitting technology. Stoll (a Karl Mayer entity) is its technology partner, which provides use-case specific solutions for producing smart knitted garments. It aims to cater to vivid fields of applications ranging from health and wellness, fitness and leisure, workplace and safety, automotive and aerospace, to home textiles and connected environments. Zoll and Skiin are the two major Textile ComputingTM solutions from Myant. However, Skiin is the one relating to smart garments while Zollhas more to do with development of medical devices in the wearable tech. category. Skiin Connected Apparel features sensors and actuators knitted directly into clothing thus connecting to the body with an aim to improve health, performance and productivity. During the surge of COVID-19,Myant came up with the concept of connected PPE enabling new ways of assessing health and performance as part of an expanding interconnected system of biometric garments. Recently, Myant was acknowledged as a winner in the Health and Wellness category of the CES 2020 Innovation Awards. This company works very closely with academia as well as allied industry partners as mentioned under a tab on their homepage ‘Innovating together’.
Mask: Connected PPE solutions by Myant during COVID- 19 pandemic
Hexoskin (Carre Technologies Inc.) based in Montreal, Canada was founded in 2006 by Pierre-Alexandre Fournier and Jean-François Roy and is known to be a leader in non-invasive sensors, software, data science and AI services. It caters to providing solutions for defence, first responders, aerospace organisations, pharmaceuticals and more. The two major products which the company offers are known as Astroskin and Hexoskin (itself). Hexoskin is a machine washable smart garment that allows long-term precise monitoring of respiratory, cardiac and activity functions along with sleep quality. Astroskin is a part of the Canadian Space Agency’s Bio-Monitor which was deployed in space in 2019 and was worn by many astronauts. The Astroskin Vital Signs Monitoring Platform is also available to conduct research on earth. What is worth mentioning here is that Hexoskin smart garments are made available for purchase online with all possible variants just like any basic range of products. They are available in 9 different sizes (2XS, XS, S, M, L, XL, 2XL, 3XL, 4XL) for men, women and junior category, in varying styles i.e. tank tops, T-shirts, etc. The company also claims that the Hexoskin Connected Health Platform has been used in various health researches which has led to publication of results in more than 120+ peer reviewed scientific research articles thus assisting research and development in this field. The company very proudly elaborates the same through the given schematic representation to summarise various areas of intervention in health research where Hexoskin has played pivotal role of capturing the observations.
Schematic representation of Hexoskin-based research area distribution
Twinery- MAS Innovations, headquartered in Sri Lanka, our neighbourhood, is an entity of Mas Holding, the largest apparel and textile manufacturer in South Asia. Twinery is known to be home to over 50 disruptive technologies. It claims to be built around its 3 main pillars – Innovation, Digital and Sustainability. Mas Holding in its attempt to cater to dynamic demands has expanded its offerings into Wearable Technology through Twinery-MAS Innovations and few others like Softmatter which is also a Wearable Technology team of MAS Holdings. Twinery also assists with incubation facilities for many Wearable Tech based start-ups. Twinery’s innovation claims to be focused on four broad areas, that are Knitting, Assembly, Colour and Surface functionalisation. They believe to grow while working cross functionally inclusive of expertise required in multidisciplinary areas like smart textiles, wearable development systems, flexible electronics, rapid prototyping, injection moulding, printing, knitting, sewing, interconnections, bonding, lamination, laser, plasma and many more. Phoenix and Firefly are two of the examples of their product development in the area of smart garments. Phoenix is a machine- washable element to be incorporated into jackets and powered by a small size rechargeable battery to last for 4 hours and control the micro-climate, thus allowing individuals to move light in extreme cold weathers without multi-layer clothing. Firefly utilises illumination technology which is CES 2017 Innovation Awards Honoree to provide next to skin illumination technology which can be integrated into textiles and keep an individual visible at all times. Noteworthy is the collaborative approach which Twinery adapts as visible from the exhaustive list of collaborators from academia and other non-apparel industries mentioned by them. This is one of the strengths for any Smart Garment manufacturing companies as it is one of the fields requiring multidisciplinary expertise. The home page of Twinery has a main tab as ‘Partner with us’. That talks all about its approach to march towards its vision.
InQube also based out in Sri Lanka is part of Brandix Group, an organisation with rich experience in apparel manufacturing with 50,000 employees across 42 locations including Sri Lanka, Cambodia, India, Bangladesh and Haiti. The InQube labs’ technology centre comprises all facilities required such as chemistry lab for advanced material research and technologies such as knitting, injection moulding, lamination, printing and bonding. It has a 3D printing facility and a bio mechanical lab for product testing. InQube is supported by already existing vertically integrated facilities in both knits and wovens by Brandix group. Adapt Ace and Sensemove are two of the many smart garment products developed at InQube. Sensemove has the capability of motion sensing and is integrated with a haptic actuator which is controlled by artificial intelligence. This intelligent clothing platform measures the framework of an individual’s physique and guides through technique which enables them to yield maximum out of every movement during the workout activity. Revolutionary, Adapt Ace provides a solution for advanced precision adjustment in brassieres by interconnecting multiple points of adjustment in it to a single operable point of calibration. It has the ability to adjust fit and support through mobile applications. The features are briefed in the diagram below.
Product features of Adapt Ace Brassiere
Well, India too is gearing up to establish its presence in this market. We do have many start-ups, young and old in the field of wearable technology. However, one of the few working specifically on textile based wearable technology solutions is Dhama Innovations based in the city of Hyderabad and founded in the year 2016. It offers instant temperature controlled wearables in the form of caps, hats, knee caps, wristbands, etc. Dhama Innovations also shares a joint US patent with General Motors for temperature controlled seats of a car which it has named as dhamaSEATING.
If we walk through the canvas thoroughly, we will get to know many such product developers who have already scaled up their manufacturing for smart garment and other e-textile based wearables. However, it is important to introspect what percentage of e-textile components really contributes to smart wearable products. If you recall the 1st article of this series regarding 3 generations of smart textile based wearable, right now majority of the products we find doing well commercially belong to 1st generation and a few, only few, to 2nd generation. 3rd generation class of prototypes do exist in research labs but we fail to find it existing commercially in the market. Hopefully, we will find them soon too.
