Smart Clothes are Coming of Age

- New Frontiers for Radiation Detection?

by: Steve Waldrop
June 24, 2002

For many years we have heard of the coming era of "Smart Clothes." Visit some of the links at the end of this article for more information and a tour of this fascinating technology that is now coming of age. Computer Geeks have led the way but the Military and medical fields will be the main beneficiary of the future in intelligent textiles. Georgia Tech and Stanford lead in this technology.

We believe this technology offers a unique chance to allow new levels of radiation detection especially in the fight against terrorists or the military use of radioactive materials for either nuclear weapons or Dirty Bombs. If we incorporated a series of radiation detectors in the textiles, we could have wearable detectors for public safety personnel. This would allow us to have very efficient detections of weapons or caches of radioactive materials

For more information on Smart Clothes, be sure to check out the following websites:

International Symposium on Wearable Computers
Georgia Tech Wearable Motherboard
Smart Clothing
International Centre of Excellence for Wearable Electronics and Fashion Products
Smart Clothes: by Juha Kaario, Research Manager, Wearable Computing, Nokia Research Center
Computer Ready- to- wear
Smart Clothes: The MIT Wearable Computing Web Page
Announcement/Call for Participation- Workshop on Wearable Computer Systems
Reindeer Herders Turn to Smart Clothes
ElekTex- A Soft New World
Heeding Your Wardrobe
American Institute of Physics- Smart Clothes
Dispatch- Smart Clothes
University Of Massachusetts- Amherst: Smart Rooms, Smart Clothes- to be topic of Computer Science Lecture

Pictures courtsey of Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Textile and Fiber Engineering