Smart Textiles in Sports Wear-Whitepaper Supplement

1: Introduction

The aim of this whitepaper is to outline perspectives for deployment of smart textiles and wearable technologies in sports clothing and equipment and to indicate areas where integration of smart features may be used to support a brand image.

Focus is on wearable technologies and smart textile applications in the broadest sense, i.e. both technologies that can be embedded into clothing and accessories which can be worn on the body. Ohmatex works with the following definitions:

Smart Textiles: Textiles with the capability to react to different kinds of physical stimuli, for example temperature, pressure etc.

Wearable Technology: Any electronic device that is small enough to be worn or carried on the body.

Interactive Textiles: Wearable technologies which are sewn into clothing and operated or controlled by an integrated control panel or operation button.

The technologies and applications presented here are selected on the basis of Ohmatex' experience and reflect the maturity of technologies currently available and the trends experienced in the sportswear market. If the options presented appear less than visionary, that is probably because the current technological state-of-the-art is in reality far less advanced than it is often presented to be by the media. Many developments require considerable work to reach a maturity which can ensure a robust product that is both as functionally reliable and washable etc. as consumers expect.

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Published with due permission from Ohmatex