Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and ECLAT Textiles announced iSmartweaR, a clothing line designed to monitor vital signs. Its main feature is that it’s contactless, allowing you to move without restrictions as you track your heart rate and breathing rates. The company uses these two data points to then provide you with insight into your physical activity, sleep quality, and emotional state.
iSmartweaR brings non-contact comfort for tracking vital signs
iSmartweaR smart clothing, jointly developed by ITRI and ECLAT Textile, transforms ordinary fabrics into smart wearables. It integrates nanosecond pulse near-field sensing technology (NPNS), with washable conductive fabrics allowing textile products to track vital signs without bodily contact.
NPNS features miniature low-power radar using Bluetooth transmission to connect with ICT systems. Its advantages are compact size, high sensitivity, high selectivity, high reliability, low price, low energy consumption and penetrability.
Conventional smart clothing uses conductive fibers or rubber as sensing electrodes, and cardiac electrical sensing modules have required at least two or more electrodes to contact the skin for capturing the heart’s electrophysiological signals. Such a limitation cannot compare to the non-contact comfort that ITRI’s iSmartweaR now offers.
ITRI’s smart clothing technology uses a single antenna radar sensing design that simultaneously detects human heartbeats, breathing rates and other activity levels all without causing any user discomfort. Using low-power microwave technology, iSmartweaR does not have direct contact with the skin, thus causing no direct pressure on the wearer’s body.
“iSmartweaR is significant and widely applicable,” said Hong-Dun Lin, manager of ITRI’s Center of Measurement Standards. “It can help prevent sudden death in infants by tracking their physiological parameters. It also analyzes a user’s average health data and can warn of abnormal fatigue levels. iSmartweaR can be used in individual sports training, long-term data analysis for senior citizen healthcare, and health monitoring for professionals such as police and firefighters. Therefore, not only is it practical for the general consumer but also for individuals in various professional fields.”
Industrial Technology Research Institute
itri.org