Wearable Technology

Video interview with Flexible Circuit Technologies at IDTechEx Wearable Europe.

In 2015 the wearable technology market will be $24.2 billion. However, the majority of this - 74% - is for already mature wearables - the humble electronic wristwatch, earphones, blood glucose test strips and the like according to IDTechEx Research in the report Wearable Technology 2015-2025: Technologies, Markets, Forecasts.

This video provides an overview of the opportunities for sensors in wearable technologies.

Researchers have demonstrated the world's first stretchable and conformable thin-film transistor (TFT) driven LED display laminated into textiles. This paves the way to wearable displays in clothing providing users with feedback.

Thin, flexible batteries in 2025 set to become a $400 million market in 2025 mainly by enabling new products.

The Ralph Lauren Polo Tech shirt features sensors knitted into the core of the product to read biological and physiological information.

Sensing Tex was founded in 2010, and is based in Barcelona, Spain. They have two main product areas, around textile sensors (mostly touch, but with R&D into many other types) and textile lighting (EL, and fibre optics).

Video interview with B+B SmartWorx at the Internet of Things Applications Europe.

The IDTechEx Research report "Wearable Sensors 2015-2025: Market Forecasts, Technologies, Players" forecasts that wearable sensors will drive the wearable technology market to $70bn by 2025.

Interactive Wear AG span out of Infineon Technologies AG in 2005, inheriting their patent portfolio around the integration of electronic components into textiles. Over the last decade they have completed over 100 commercial projects with leading brands across the apparel, technical textile and automotive industries, amongst others.

The Obama administration will award a Manufacturing Innovation Institute for Flexible Hybrid Electronics to a consortium of 162 companies, universities, and non-profits led by the FlexTech Alliance.

Prototypes to be displayed at the IDTechEx Show in Santa Clara.

Sarvint Technologies are a small company from Atlanta, Georgia. They hold two key patents around smart clothing and sensing, and came to the attention of the industry when they filed multiple parallel IP infringement claims against all of the players in the US with these products. They have now gained $6m Series A funding of their own, and will release a smart clothing product with biometric sensors in Q1 2016.

A new world of flexible, bendable, even stretchable electronics is emerging from research labs to address a wide range of potentially game-changing uses.

Sensoria Inc has announced the 2015 line of wearable fitness gear and integrated running system, along with updates to the accompanying Android app.

Video interview with FlexEnable at Printed Electronics Europe.

Researchers have created highly flexible, efficient white LEDs with potential use in wearable displays.

Optinvent is a technology company in Rennes, France, developing the ORA-1 smartglasses, making the company one of the few companies in the highly active space for smart eyewear with a product offering that's currently available for sale, albeit to developers only at this stage.

Researchers have developed an efficient algorithm that can interpret the wheezing of patients with breathing difficulties to give medical providers information about what's happening in the lungs. The research is part of a larger, ongoing project to develop wearable smart medical sensors for monitoring, collecting and interpreting personal health data.

Over the last 18 months IDTechEx has reported in Printed Electronics World and at our events on the repositioning of companies moving from a component supply proposition to actually building products.