Wearable Electroactive Fabrics Integrated in Garments

Moving smart textiles – our goal is to develop novel, unprecedented garments for haptic stimulation comprising flexible and wearable textile actuators and sensors, including control electronics, as a new type of textile-based large area electronics.

Project

Changing the world of textiles

Within the European Research Call "Flexible and Wearable Eletronics" (H2020 ICT-02 RIA) the goal of this project is to develop novel, unprecedented garments for haptic stimulation comprising flexible and wearable textile actuators and sensors, including control electronics, as a new type of textile-based large area electronics. These wearables are based on a new kind of textile muscles which yarns are coated with electromechanically active polymers and contract when a low voltage is applied.

Textile muscles offer a completely novel and very different quality of haptic sensation, accessing also receptors of our tactile sensory system that do not react on vibration, but on soft pressure or stroke. Furthermore, being textile materials, they offer a new way of designing and fabricating wearable haptics and can be seamlessly integrated into fabrics and garments. For these novel form of textile muscles, we foresee a huge range of possible applications in haptics: for ergonomics, movement coaching in sports, or wellness, for enhancement of virtual or augmented reality applications in gaming or for training purposes, for inclusion of visually handicapped people by providing them information about their environment, for stress reduction or social communication, adaptive furniture, automotive industry and many more.

What people say

„This new technology really is a revolution that opens up new endless possibilities.“

Jan van Erp, University Twente

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Advisory Board

Dr. Marijke Gröhnloh - Noome
Lecturer & Researcher

| Advisory Board Member |

Marijke started her career as nurse at a general medicine and infection disease ward at the Radboudumc (The Netherlands). At the same time, she obtained her master’s degree in nursing science. In 2016 she finished the study of ‘End-of-life care in the ICU’ and got her PhD degree (Nijmegen). From 2013, she also works as a nursing lecturer and researcher at different Universities of Applied Sciences, nowadays at Saxion University of Applied Sciences in Deventer. Last year she was project leader of the study ‘Sociaal Aanraken op Afstand’, which focused on simulating or supporting social touch with technologies in case of isolation of quarantine. We all experienced the effects of shortage of social touch during the COVID-19 pandemic, and studies shows that effects on vulnerable people are even bigger. The study resulted in three prototypes.

Jan Weber
Senior Research Fellow

| Advisory Board Member |

Jan is a former Senior Research Fellow for Boston Scientific and currently advisor to a few companies among TNO-van Holst (Netherlands), Genesis Medtech (Singapore), NLC venture builders (Netherlands) and a few others.  During his career over the last 32 years in medtech, Boston Scientific and Johnson&Johnson, he has contributed as inventor on 230 Patents and an additional 170 patent applications in the broad field of medical technology, processes, products and applications.  Jan is also co-inventor and developer in the equine business and a semi professional art painter, for which he has won several awards.  Originally studied physics at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.

Otto Carlander
Innovation Enthusiast

| Advisory Board Member |

Otto has been working as a researcher, product developer and manager within the defence and telecom industry for the last 20 years. Currently Otto is working as a management consultant alongside with some technical development projects in his company OTROLICA. Otto is particularly active where academia meets industry and taking innovation to an applied setting. He did his PhD at Chalmers (Gothenburg, Sweden) within interaction design focusing on tactile interfaces. Previously he was in the advisory board for the SUITCEYES project, aiming to develop haptic communication technologies for people with deaf blindness.

Media

Titelbild Podcast
Titelbild Podcast
Video Framtiden runt hörnet Vardagen – SVT Play

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