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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with due permission from Ohmatex
