Wearable computing claims new soft sensors (Arduino meets Wearables)

Physical computing has become more and more common place with the Internet of things. This means there is a new need for new kinds of sensors.

In fact there’s a need for new kinds of electronics. One of the newest and most interesting types of sensors are sensors made on textile machines.

If we consider traditional textile machines we think of me wearing wovens and everything that goes into making her clothes. Thanks to the development of new kinds of fibers including conductive yarns and conductive carbon we are now able to realize electronic components on textile machines.

Currently we already have all sorts of pressure sensors pushbuttons and stretch sensors. Researchers all over the globe are currently working on making things such as capacitors and resistors potentiometers entirely out of textiles.

This will dramatically change the way we create clothing in the near future. Given the fact that our current cell phones are equal that of having a computer in our pockets we no longer need the computational Power required by additional computing system. The sensors integrated into our clothing can simply broadcast via Bluetooth LE to our cell phones with the computation happens.

photo credit: aaronparecki via photopin cc