Internet of Things & Wearable Technology Insights

Owlet, a smart baby bootie that measures your child’s heart rate, launched on our Hardware Battlefield last January and has just raised $1.85 million from multiple firms including ff Venture Capital and Eniac Ventures. Also in participation of the round was Azimuth Ventures, Life Sciences Angel Network, Peak Ventures, and Brand Project. The company also completed the RGA Connected Devices Accelerator through Tech Stars.

The current move towards wearables is surely good news for us, but unremittingly bad news for them. A flexible sensor developed at the University of Tokyo is about to discover just how bad when it's put to work as a sort of early warning system inside diapers. It's constructed from a printable organic circuit that detects changes in wetness, temperature and pressure, but apparently not smell (small mercies). It can charge wirelessly and transmit data wirelessly too, so that a caregiver holding a receiver can tell whether a baby or incontinent elderly person needs changing without having to unclothe them first. The device is expected to come to market as soon as its power efficiency has been improved, and we bet itcan't wait.

Wireless technology is inevitably being integrated into everything we know, and soon it will be included in our clothing. A textile waveguide antenna has been created by developers at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and Universiti Malaysia Perlis. By using a metamaterial-like unit cell with transmission lines, the antenna has made progress from an idea to a more tangible concept. When this technology actually happens, we can be walking Wi-Fi signals. 

The textile waveguide antenna is small and tough, and is capably used by 2.45 and 5.4 GHz WLAN applications, and will be able to transmit a nice portable Wi-Fi signal. Successfully mixing wireless technology with clothing has been a long-term future goal for many important industries all around the world. Militaristic forces could take specific interest in thistechnology, for this could help with tracking troops, communicating while in the field, and to monitor soldiers’ vital signs. Even hospitals could start using this technology to medically monitor the patients at all times.

Scientists in the UK developing wearable electronics have knitted a flexible fabric that delivers twice the power output of current energy harvesting textiles.

There is considerable interest and research into wearable piezoelectric energy harvesters that use waste energy from human movement or the ambient environment to power low-energy consuming wearable devices, such as wireless sensors and consumer electronics. Typically these materials are ceramic-based with limited flexibility, so aren’t that comfortable to wear, and include toxic elements like lead. They also involve charge-collecting metallic electrodes with poor fatigue resistance that fail after repeated use. New, less rigid materials with sufficient mechanical strength and an all-in-one design are therefore highly sought after.

The polymeric piezoelectric fibres created by Navneet Soin at the University of Bolton and colleagues in the laboratory of Elias Siores fulfill all of the above: they are flexible, strong and breathable.

Energy harvesting fabric is soft yet strong