Using a novel fabrication process, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have produced smart textiles that snugly conform to the body so they can sense the wearer’s posture and recognize its wearer’s activities, like walking, running, and jumping. By incorporating a special type of plastic yarn and using heat to slightly melt it—a process called thermoforming—the researchers were able to greatly improve the precision of pressure sensors woven into multilayered knit textiles, which they call 3DKnITS. They used this process to create a “smart” shoe and mat, and then built a hardware and software system to measure and interpret data from the pressure sensors in real time. Once the model was trained, it could classify the user’s activity on the smart mat (walking, running, doing push-ups, etc.) with 99.6% accuracy and could recognize 7 yoga poses with 98.7% accuracy.
Their fabrication process, which takes advantage of digital knitting technology, enables rapid prototyping and can be easily scaled up for large-scale manufacturing, said Irmandy Wicaksono, a PhD student and research assistant in the MIT Media Lab. The technique could have many applications, especially in healthcare and rehabilitation. For example, it could be used to produce smart shoes that track the gait of someone who is learning to walk again after an injury, or socks that monitor pressure on a diabetic patient’s foot to prevent the formation of ulcers.
The high accuracy of 3DKnITS could make them useful for applications such as gathering biomechanical and form-fitting data, which are useful not only for athletes and dancers, but also for prosthetic designers and shoemakers.
