IoT Gets Intimate With Smart Underwear

Myant, a leading innovation in wearables, has developed Smart Underwear – a pair of briefs that could potentially transform healthcare.

Thanks to biometric sensors woven into the fabric of the underwear, they can measure things like sleep quality, activity, stress levels, temperatures, and heart condition, thus providing some of the most reliable and effective ways to detect and prevent health issues.
Myant’s SKIIN brand fabric sends data back to a corresponding app. Myant’s platform analyzes the data, provides guidance on lifestyle changes, and allows users to share information with healthcare providers.
Underwear is a good choice for a smart garment because it makes consistent, close contact with the body – a must-have for continuous skin sensors.
Myant’s underwear innovations fit into the larger trend of e-textiles and smart clothing, powered by artificial intelligence and tiny semiconductor technology. Scientists are replacing clunky ECGs and health monitoring devices like watches and chest straps with comfortable smart garments.

Health providers and developers believe advances like these will increase compliance and lead to better healthcare outcomes.
Actually, smart garments will probably be able to do much more for us. Sensors nowadays can be embedded directly into textiles – kind of like weaving additional yarn into an existing piece of fabric – or by applying sensors to the top of the fabric. Either way, the use cases for e-textiles go far beyond just health monitoring. Smart garments are being developed to do things like:

• Diagnose comfort levels of amputees by monitoring the interaction between them and their artificial limb.
• Assess patterns in athletes’ performance, and deliver small electric shocks to underperforming muscles
• Wake up sleepy drivers on the road before accidents occur, with built-in fatigue monitoring
• Connect to smart home systems, to do things like change the thermostat when your body is cold (or hot)
• and improve the safety of firefighters and other first responders during emergencies by monitoring heart rate and body temperature

  The number of potential applications and markets for e-textiles is vast, including military and space, automotive, haptic suits for virtual reality, sports and fitness, and assistive clothing.
  The latest report by IDTechE, a research firm, predicts that smart textiles will be worth over $1.4 billion by 2030.

  Author: Tim Cole
  Image Credit: Myant/Skiin