Wearable Technology

Researchers have spent nearly two decades trying to develop skin-like integrated circuits that can be stretched, folded, bent and twisted - working all the while - and then snap back without fail, every time. Such circuits presage a day of wearable and implantable products, but one hurdle has always stood in the way.

IDTechEx interviewed Seiichi Karatsu, Atsushi Iwasaki, Daisuke Takahashi and Masanori Yamamoto from Kyocera about their activities in haptics, including their HAPTIVITY products and their latest work on haptics within in mold electronics.

A host of batteryless solutions have recently been announced. The rapid increase in adoption of batteryless solutions is tracked in the IDTechEx report, "Battery Elimination in Electronics: Market Impact IoT, 6G, Healthcare, Wearables 2021-2041".

Researchers have developed a patch that plants can "wear" to monitor continuously for plant diseases or other stresses, such as crop damage or extreme heat.

Researchers have developed a new process for producing movable, self-adjusting materials systems with standard 3D-printers. These systems can undergo complex shape changes, contracting and expanding under the influence of moisture in a pre-programmed manner.

A sweat-proof "electronic skin" — a conformable, sensor-embedded sticky patch that monitors a person's health without malfunctioning or peeling away, even when a wearer is perspiring.

"Thermoelectric Energy Harvesting and Other Zero-Emission Electricity from Heat 2022-2042", a new report from IDTechEx, finds that disillusioned manufacturers share a business of mere hundreds of millions of dollars after decades of trying, mainly with bismuth telluride and variants.

IDTechEx interviewed Srinivas Pattamatta, VP of Business Development at Atmosic. They have developed low power Bluetooth chips with integrated power management systems capable of enabling energy harvesting.

The collaboration is the first aimed at assessing and fundamentally improving human movement and physical rehabilitation using full body sensors, covering 95% of the muscle mass of the human body.

A company overview presentation provided by Sensel

Preliminary results of a new study show that a wearable electroencephalogram device that gathers data from the ear measures sleep as reliably as traditional EEG electrodes attached to the scalp.

Seizing on the observation that most of the world's keyboards up until this point have been somewhat rigid, the KnittedKeyboard II seeks to spark a paradigm shift in expectations by way of an interactive, textile-based musical device with the familiar layout of piano keys. And the unfamiliar nature of being a piece of musical knitwear.

Researchers at the University of Coimbra (Portugal) have developed a new stretchable conductive ink based on a liquid metal alloy gel. They are aiming to commercialize this technology for wearable/medical applications such as electronic skin patches.

As smart watches are increasingly able to monitor the vital signs of health, including what's going on when we sleep, a problem has emerged: those wearable, wireless devices are often disconnected from our body overnight, being charged at the bedside.

Most people associate the term "wearable" with a fitness tracker, smartwatch, or wireless earbuds. But what if you could wear cutting-edge biotechnology in your clothing, and it could warn you when you were exposed to something dangerous?

IDTechEx have released their latest report on Electronic Skin Patches. The report, titled "Electronic Skin Patches 2021-2031", covers the market, technology, and players in this unique product sector, and predicts that the sector will be worth $10bn in annual revenue in 2021.

Want a smartphone that stretches, takes damage, and still doesn't miss a call? A team of researchers has created a new type of soft electronics, paving the way for devices that are self-healing, reconfigurable, and recyclable. These skin-like circuits are soft and stretchy, sustain numerous damage events under load without losing electrical conductivity, and can be recycled to generate new circuits at the end of a product's life.

In a new study researchers have demonstrated they could print layers of electrically conductive ink on polyester fabric to make an e-textile that could be used in the design of future wearable devices.

Look around at any of the major fashion brands, and you start to see a pattern: there is not much there in the way of design-oriented, pro-science thinking. Those worlds have, unfortunately, remained separate for the most part. The general message that society is sending could not be any clearer: you can be beautiful, you can be smart, but you cannot be both.

The demand for flexible wearable electronics has spiked with the dramatic growth of smart devices that can exchange data with other devices over the internet with embedded sensors, software, and other technologies.