Future Textiles
Necessity of textiles
What we often forget is that textiles are a basic need after food and sheltering since human’s existence and covers a much bigger field in our everyday life than we thought. We wake up and wear our clothes, we step on a carpet, we go out and use the car and then go back and sit on a couch upholstered with textile products and then use a blanket to sleep on sheets. Adding fashion and design beside technical characteristics, the textile sector is enriched with the necessity of not just being but also well being, if we speak for human evolution.
Textiles of the future
If we could determine the new well being, this would be the use of the technology in a smart way that serves the everyday without creating other problems, such as isolation, sedentary lifestyle and harmful environmental processes. The idea is to create a contemporary textile product that understands us, inform us, evolve us and challenge us to feel more. The benefit from this product will be to motivate people, inform them for significance of prolepsis in health, of exercise and activity beyond illnesses and injuries obstacles and challenge them to interact with each other and surroundings with a non-stigmatizing but unhindered way and finally transforming textiles from goods to services.
Smart and e-(lectronic) textiles
Smart Textiles are textile products such as fibers, filaments or yarns in woven, knitted or non-woven structures, which can interact with the environment/user.
Electronic Textiles (e-textiles) are textile sensors and or circuit systems that have flexibility, look like fabrics and can gather information, transport data and communicate with the wearer and an outside party.
The vision behind wearable computing foresees future electronic systems to be an integral part of our everyday outfits.
Think of a smart-watch and then you can imagine the smart garment multiplying the application and accuracy possibilities to the whole body instead of the small wrist-surface covered by the watch. Wearable systems will be characterized by their ability to automatically recognize the activity and the behavioral status of their own user as well as of the situation around her/him, and to use this information to adjust the system’s configuration and functionality.