'Looking smart' has new meaning

InTech, Jan 2003

Blacksburg, Va.-E-textiles may soon become personal "wearable computers" and large sensing and communications fabrics if engineering researchers at Virgina Tech have their way.

Mark Jones and Tom Martin, both faculty in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech, are principal investigators on two federally funded e-textiles projects. E-textiles are cloth interwoven with electronic components.

With funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Martin and Jones are working with colleagues at the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute (ISO in Arlington,Va., on a project they call "Stretch."

The aim of Stretch (not an acronym) is to develop large e-textile fabrics that will look like typical military equipment, such as tents or camouflage nets. The electronic wires and sensors that engineers weave into the fabric will perform the complex procedure of listening for the faint sounds of distant enemy vehicles.

Within the fabric,the sensors and their connecting wires will communicate with one another to create patterns of information. Through its software, a computer can then translate this information and turn it into images that will enable soldiers to determine the location of detected sounds.

"We're designing and constructing a 30-foot-long prototype for the Stretch fabric,"Jones said.The goal of the project is to develop a low-cost, flexibly deployable e-textile system that has low power requirements and doesn't rely on radio waves."The Virginia Tech and ISI researchers plan to test the prototype this month.

The military already has sound detection systems that rely on radio waves, but communication via radio waves can alert an adversary to a military unit's location. The e-textiles system produces no detectable energy and also requires less power.

"Cloth has properties that can be useful for certain electronic applications,"said Robert Parker, director of ISI and coprincipal investigator on the Stretch project."We can easily and cheaply make large pieces of cloth light and strong that can be stretched over frames into any desired shape."

Sound detection is not the only potential use for the Stretch e-textile system. Jones and Martin have also received a $400,000 National Science Foundation Information Technology Research (ITR) grant to design wearable computers made of e-textiles.

The generic concept of wearable computers is a small CPU in a fanny pack connected to a cumbersome headgear that holds a display screen at eye level. The Virginia Tech ITR project is something completely different.

Because the wires and sensors in e-textiles are in the fabric, wearable computers could look more like normal shirts or hats or other types of cloth apparel. These computers wouldn't connect users to the Internet or send and receive e-mail but would perform specific functions necessary to the wearers.