CAREER: Toward Pervasive Wearable Technology: A Cut-and-Sewn, Textile-Integrated Smart Clothing Platform

可穿戴技术能够通过集成在服装上的可穿戴传感器和接口技术，促进对人类佩戴者的普遍、持续的理解和互动。然而，服装比大多数电子技术更灵活、更灵活、更贴心，给设计和制造带来了独特的挑战。为可穿戴技术的每一种应用开发服装的启动成本都很高。该项目的主要目标是研究一种灵活、可适应的服装集成体系结构，用于传感和执行技术，该体系结构将促进各种应用的开发，而不需要新的硬件开发。除了功能的灵活性，将硬件部件集成到服装结构中强调了裁剪缝纫、大规模生产服装的方法。这种关注降低了服装制造商进入智能服装和可穿戴技术的门槛，同时保留了服装的人为因素，包括美学和物理舒适性。广泛普及的可穿戴技术将允许在不需要就诊或住院的情况下对医疗条件进行持续和无形的监控，并将允许个人设备变得情景感知，提供对用户的活动、目标和社交背景做出响应的信息和警报。智能服装可以改变医疗保健和医疗监测、人机接口、服装消费和使用等许多领域的前沿。电子纺织品和服装生产方面的创新和专业知识为美国服装业提供了强大的竞争优势。此外，智能服装的发展有效地架起了许多跨学科领域的桥梁，包括服装设计中以女性为主的领域。该项目支持的活动扩大了妇女对STEM学科的参与，并鼓励教育中的学科间隔性。

Wearable technology has the ability to facilitate pervasive, continuous understanding of and interaction with the human wearer through garment-integrated wearable sensors and interface technology. However, clothing is more flexible, mobile, and intimate than most electronic technologies, and presents unique challenges for design and manufacture. Start-up costs of developing garments for each application of wearable technology are high. The primary objective of this project is the investigation of a flexible, adaptable garment-integrated architecture for sensing and actuating technologies that will facilitate the development of a wide variety of applications without the need for new hardware development. In addition to flexibility of function, the integration of hardware components into garment structures emphasizes the methods of cut-and-sewn, mass-manufactured apparel. This focus lowers the barrier-to-entry to smart clothing and wearable technology for apparel manufacturers while simultaneously preserving the human factors of apparel including aesthetics and physical comfort. Widespread, pervasive wearable technology would allow medical conditions to be continuously and imperceptibly monitored without requiring a clinical visit or hospital stay, and would allow personal devices to become context-aware, providing information and alerts that are responsive to the activities, objectives, and social context of the user. Smart clothing can shift the frontiers of healthcare and medical monitoring, human-device interface, apparel consumption and use, and many other fields. Innovation and expertise in the production of electronic textiles and clothing offers strong competitive advantage to the US apparel industry. Further, smart clothing development effectively bridges many interdisciplinary fields, including the predominantly-female field of clothing design. Activities supported by this project expand the participation of women in STEM disciplines and encourage interdisiplinarity in education.