Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed SonoTextiles that use acoustic waves with glass microfibres, for the first time perhaps, which if woven into a T-shirt, for instance, could measure your breathing, or gloves that translate your hand movements into commands for your computer.
- Unlike earlier developments in this area, which usually use electronics, the ETH researchers rely on acoustic waves passed through glass fibres which makes the measurements more precise and the textiles lighter, more breathable and easier to wash. They are also inexpensive because readily available materials are used, and the power consumption is very low.
THE STUDY, THEY TEAM: Led by Daniel Ahmed, Professor of Acoustic Robotics for Life Sciences and Healthcare, at ETH, the researchers have transformed normal fabrics into smart sensors that react to touch, pressure and movement.
- Yingqiang Wang is the first author of the study–‘SonoTextiles: smart acoustic textiles for health monitoring’—along with co-author Chaochao Sun. The study has been published in the journal Nature Electronics.
- While research has already been conducted into smart textiles based on acoustics, this team is perhaps the first to explore the use of glass fibre in combination with signals that use different frequencies.
- The glass fibres are woven into the fabric at regular intervals. At one end of each glass fibre is a small transmitter that emits sound waves. The other end of each of the glass fibres is connected to a receiver that measures whether the waves have changed.
- Each transmitter works at a different frequency. This means it requires little computing power to determine which fibre the sound waves have changed on. Previous smart textiles often struggled with data overload and signal processing issues, since each sensor location had to be evaluated individually. In the future, the data could be sent directly to a computer or smartphone in real time.
FUTURE USE: In the future, SonoTextiles could be used in a variety of ways: as a shirt or T-shirt, which could monitor the breathing of asthma patients and trigger an alarm in an emergency.
- In sports training and performance monitoring, athletes could receive real-time analysis of their movements, to optimise their performance and prevent injuries.
- SonoTextiles could even measure a person’s posture and improve their quality of life as an assistive technology.
- The textiles have potential for sign language: gloves with this technology could simultaneously translate hand movements into text or speech.
- They could also be used in virtual or augmented reality environments.
- People who want to improve their posture could receive targeted feedback to correct poor posture.
- The textiles could also indicate when a wheelchair user needs to change position to prevent pressure ulcers.
- The researchers now want to make the system more robust and examine how the electronics can be better integrated into the textiles.
WHAT THEY SAID:
Although the everyday usability of SonoTextiles is potentially very high, that there is still room for improvement in terms of practical application. Glass microfibres worked well as sound conductors in the lab, but they could potentially break in everyday use. The beauty is that we can easily replace the glass fibres with metal. Sound also propagates effectively through metal. We would like to expand our research in this direction and also into other applications.
— Daniel Ahmed
Professor, Acoustic Robotics for Life Sciences and Healthcare
ETH Zurich
