Innovation

A pioneering textile innovation promises to transform the future of medical and protective clothing. Developed by researchers at Donghua University, this advanced fabric delivers unmatched strength, breathability, and liquid resistance. Scalable for mass production, the material is designed for long-term use, opening new possibilities in healthcare, industrial safety, and wearable protective gear across demanding sectors.

A bunch of 10 innovators, with the shared mission of decarbonising the textile and fashion industry, has won the Global Change Award for 2025 for their bold and pioneering ideas, who, as changemakers, are tackling some of fashion’s most urgent challenges: from reducing emissions and energy use, to enabling circularity and cleaner materials.

Research at Canada’s Laurentian University establishes a foundation for fully automated robotic knitting systems, enabling customisable, flexible production processes that integrate perception, planning, and actuation, thereby advancing textile manufacturing through intelligent robotic automation.

Researchers at Cornell have developed a new type of unobtrusive smart clothing that may not require you to manually log your workout, because an artificial intelligence pipeline detects movements, identifies the exercise and counts reps. It could also be useful for physical therapists monitoring the progress of patients at home.

If you are into innovative uses for cellulose-based textile waste obtained from upcycling cotton-polyester blended garments, then The Mills Fabrica Innovation Challenge is for you. Last date of application is 20 June 2025.

Unlike wearables and what could be a gamechanger for everyday lives, researchers at the Fibers@MIT lab have fabricated an autonomous programmable fibre computer in the form of an elastic fibre, which could monitor health conditions and physical activity, alerting the wearer to potential health risks in real-time.

A group of researchers has crafted an AI-enabled jacket with an electronic textile that warms the user without overheating and provides immediate temperature readings for easy monitoring.

The German Institutes of Textile and Fiber Research (DITF) and tech company, Heraeus, are researching to reduce the risk of infection from medical workwear. This forms the basis for future industrial production of textiles for durable and reliable protection against infection.

New innovative cloth developed by a research group at the University of Waterloo requires no bulky batteries or manual controls, the warmth generated by the fabric comes entirely from solar energy, making it an environmentally friendly, self-sustaining solution for winter wear.

And now a multifunctional sensor based on semiconductor fibres that emulates the five human senses and is expected to be utilised in a variety of state-of-the-art technology fields such as wearables, Internet of Things (IoT), electronic devices, and soft robotics.