Engineers At MIT Have Created Actual Programmable Fibers (interestingengineering.com) 24
Engineers at MIT have recently announced that they have successfully developed a programmable fiber. Interesting Engineering reports: Featured in Nature Communications, this new research could result in the development of wearable tech that could sense, store, analyze, and infer the activity(s) of its wearers in real-time. The senior author of the study, Yeol Fink, believes that digital fibers like those developed in this study could help expand the possibilities for fabrics to "uncover the context of hidden patterns in the human body that could be used for physical performance monitoring, medical inference, and early disease detection." Applications for the technology could even expand into other areas of our lives like, for example, storing wedding music within the bride's gown.
The fibers were created by chaining hundreds of microscale silicon digital chips into a preform to make a new "smart" polymer fiber. By using precision control, the authors of the study were able to create fibers with the continuous electrical connection between each chip of tens of meters. These fibers are thin and flexible and can even be passed through the eye of a needle. This would mean they could be seamlessly (pun intended) woven into existing fabrics, and can even withstand being washed at least ten times without degrading. This would mean this wearable tech could be retrofitted to existing clothing and you wouldn't even know it's there. Such innovation is interesting, but it could open up doors for applications only ever dreamed of.
The fiber also has a pretty decent storage capacity too -- all things considered. During the research, it was found to be possible to write, store, and recall 767-kilobit full-color short movie files and a 0.48-megabyte music file. The files can be stored for two months without power. The fibers also integrate a neural network with thousands of connections. This was used to monitor and analyze the surface body temperature of a test subject after being woven into the armpit of the shirt. By training the neural network with 270-minutes of data the team got it to predict the minute-by-minute activity of the shirt's wearer with 96% accuracy. The fibers are also controlled using a small external device that could have microcontrollers added to it in the future.
The fibers were created by chaining hundreds of microscale silicon digital chips into a preform to make a new "smart" polymer fiber. By using precision control, the authors of the study were able to create fibers with the continuous electrical connection between each chip of tens of meters. These fibers are thin and flexible and can even be passed through the eye of a needle. This would mean they could be seamlessly (pun intended) woven into existing fabrics, and can even withstand being washed at least ten times without degrading. This would mean this wearable tech could be retrofitted to existing clothing and you wouldn't even know it's there. Such innovation is interesting, but it could open up doors for applications only ever dreamed of.
The fiber also has a pretty decent storage capacity too -- all things considered. During the research, it was found to be possible to write, store, and recall 767-kilobit full-color short movie files and a 0.48-megabyte music file. The files can be stored for two months without power. The fibers also integrate a neural network with thousands of connections. This was used to monitor and analyze the surface body temperature of a test subject after being woven into the armpit of the shirt. By training the neural network with 270-minutes of data the team got it to predict the minute-by-minute activity of the shirt's wearer with 96% accuracy. The fibers are also controlled using a small external device that could have microcontrollers added to it in the future.
It "also has a pretty decent storage capacity too" (Score:3)
Gives new meaning to the word "smarty-pants" (Score:3)
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Disney is really protective about their intellectual property.
Common guys, what is wrong with consistent units? (Score:2)
"it was found to be possible to write, store, and recall 767-kilobit full-color short movie files and a 0.48-megabyte music file."
A couple minor quibbles here. First of all, I kind of doubt that is really kilobits, probably kilobytes. But that is not my biggest beef.
If you are discussing two things of similar magnitude please be consistent with the units. If you are going to use kilothingies, use kilothingies. If you are gonna use megathingies, use megathingies. If that was really meant to be kilobytes (
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If you are discussing two things of similar magnitude please be consistent with the units.
You can't fix [the] stupid.
Is that a real person's name? (Score:2)
This is disconcerting. (Score:2)
The fibers are made from chains of hundreds of tiny silicon chips
I realize it's a proof of concept right now but the idea of having clothing that is capable of computing in plain sight without me knowing makes the paranoia in me crop up. Collectively, it could be used as an omnidirectional camera. I certainly hope there is a high level of complexity of weaving these things because I'm not ready for such things to exist.
Get a patent (Score:2)
Maybe weave it into a belt. (Score:4, Insightful)
As opposed to what? (Score:2)
Figurative fibers?
That's not a pun (Score:2)
"This would mean they could be seamlessly (pun intended) woven into existing fabrics,..."
I would like to know what pun the writer had intended, because I don't see one. I see a seamstress / tailor / clothing-designer / machine / loom weaving cloth without any seams. That's the definition of seamlessly.
Is there another?
This isn't some abstract form of a seam. This is a seam, plain and simple. Using the perfect word specifically means it's not a pun.
Oh my "pun" is intended, because it's a word that I'm us
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Oh, my "pun" is intended, because it's a word that I'm using correctly, but it's not a pun in the way that I'm using it.
Oh, the irony!
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Ha! Way to double-down! (double-up?)
I want the new Synology cargo shorts (Score:2)
The ones with a set of RAID pockets.
Oh Great (Score:3)
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So now even our clothes can spy on us. Although it would be kind of cool if your sock can tell you where the other one is hiding.
That does make up for the reports of exactly how far down the dribble goes when you think your done peeing, but there’s a bit left.
Father's despair (Score:2)
Applications for the technology could even expand into other areas of our lives like, for example, storing wedding music within the bride's gown.
As if the wedding dress wasn't outrageously expensive enough, now you want to require an RIAA license? You monster! And the RIAA will probably demand a single use implementation, so the dress self-destructs after playing the music once.
The RIAA have elected themselves the leading edge of the onrushing global corporate dystopia. They've already had lots of practice.