CAREER: System-on-Cloth: A Cloud Manufacturing Framework for Embroidered Wearable Electronics

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This Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award will contribute to the advancement of national prosperity and economic welfare by researching systems that improve access to manufacturing services. Wearable electronics are widely used in health monitoring and wearable computing and there is a compelling need for comfort, biocompatibility, and easy operation. Recent progress in smart fabrics, textiles, and garments and the associated manufacturing technologies provides opportunities for next-generation wearable electronic devices that are fabricated on cloth. Automatic embroidery manufacturing is now an accessible tool for individuals and entrepreneurs. Embroidery offers great potential for electronic design due to its flexibility in transferring a desired pattern to fabric substrates. This project aims to establish a cloud manufacturing framework that integrates electronics and design-to-manufacturing translation in a system that can be used by customers, manufacturers, design experts, and developers to design and produce embroidered wearable electronics. In addition, this project also aims to broaden participation from K-12, undergraduate, and graduate students, to provide rich multidisciplinary classroom and non-classroom experiences for all levels of students, and to inspire student interest in STEM careers.The research goal of this CAREER project is to establish a cloud-based manufacturing framework for embroidered wearable electronics as an accessible platform technology towards System-on-Cloth. Three tasks are planned to achieve the goal: 1) to understand physical variations of conductive threads and flexible electronics by physical modeling and experimental testing for embroidered electronics; 2) to create Electronic Design Automation (EDA) software that will realize design-to-manufacturing translation from schematics by integrating new Electrical Rule Checking (ERC) and Design Rule Checking (DRC) criteria, optimal stitch generation, and an open library of wearable electronics; and 3) to explore a cloud manufacturing framework with open architecture, open source code, and friendly user-interfaces that is accessible to customers, manufacturers, software developers, as well as electronic design experts. The cloud manufacturing framework will incorporate EDA features, high tractability, reliability, and compatibility for use by a diverse spectrum of individuals and entrepreneurs.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.