Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Chinese sleep tech operator DeRucci Healthy Sleep Co Ltd (SHE: 001323) have been breaking new ground in the wearable technology field.
At a closed door event in late October, they formally unveiled their latest research achievement: the”FiberCircuits” intelligent fibre platform.
Spearheaded by MIT Media Lab researcher Joseph A. Paradiso, the technology promises to enable flexible materials to possess autonomous intelligence. He says that it signifies the entry of human-computer interaction into a so-called “weavable intelligence” stage where the fibres themselves are intelligent and capable of gathering human sleep insights.
It essentially works by embedding AI chips and micro-sensors into fibres, as described in a news release from DeRucci on Nov. 7. The team embedded circuits as small as 0.9 millimetres to analyze biometrics in subjects.
The creators say FiberCircuits opens new avenues for sleep health research and monitoring. Additionally, they believe it represents a significant achievement in the Chinese-American partnership for developing intelligent soft materials.
“Embedding sensors and circuits into fibre-like objects allows them to be woven into items like clothing, which will elevate wearable computing to a whole new level,” Paradiso stated.
The MIT researcher explained how he believed that the technology would have multiple applications and potentially become a game changer with numerous possibilities.
“From sleep monitoring to medical assistance, and broader human-computer interaction scenarios, this material-level intelligence has the potential to reshape data acquisition methods and provide new interfaces for scientific and industrial collaboration,” DeRUCCI said.
At the event, they demonstrated how the technology could be used in a mattress for posture recognition, an eye mask prototype used to measure respiratory rhythm and nocturnal muscle activity, and a pillow utilized for quantifying skin response to pressure changes. MIT and DeRUCCI plan to accelerate their research on FiberCircuits over the next year.
As highlighted on MIT Media Lab’s website, FiberCircuits is also being used for virtual reality applications, a beanie that functions as a turn signal for bicycle riders when they move their head left or right, and research on other speculative wearable applications like sleep masks, smart rings and even space suits.
Paradiso currently directs the Responsive Environments Group at MIT’s Media Lab. It studies the latest developments in sensor technology and the impact they can have on humans. This group is responsible for helping to developed FiberCircuits.
Paradiso is an expert in wireless sensing systems, wearable body sensor tech, ubiquitous computing and power management for embedded sensors. He is known for lecturing scholars on these and other subjects and has written more than 350 publications regarding his areas of academic interest.
In a nutshell, FiberCircuits is distinct because it is an open-source, potentially mass-producible, privacy-preserving, closed-loop AI fibre that a bedding company could weave into a mattress today and a researcher could reprogram for alternative purposes tomorrow. These characteristics have made the technology’s development worth celebrating. Nonetheless, it is still in the prototype/research phase.
Paradiso (right) and DeRUCCI CTO Chen Wenze at the MIT-hosted event. Photo credit: DeRUCCI
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Asia has been a leader in intelligent fibre tech
Fibre-based electronics have been seeing a rapid rate of evolution in recent years thanks to researchers like MIT and DeRUCCI.
Many other investigators, particularly in Asia, have also delved into this niche of wearable intelligent micro-sensor tech. Fudan University and Donghua University in Shanghai have studied energy autonomous wearable fabrics for health monitoring and neuromorphic computing.
Furthermore, Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University has developed ultra-thin semiconductor fibres that can weave seamlessly into every day fabrics. This school published a groundbreaking study about their research in Nature last year.
For the first time, Nanyang was able to put high-performance crystalline semiconductor cores made of silicon and germanium into hair-thin fibres that retain flexibility. Nanyang described the technology as a “smart textile fibre” that can detect light and perceive its surroundings.
Read more: Spiritual sleep tech: luxury UK hotel starts using amethyst pillows
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