Wearable technology has become a staple in modern life, but most devices are limited to smartwatches, rings, and eyewear. Now, researchers have developed a revolutionary thread-based computer that can be stitched directly into clothing, paving the way for a new era of body monitoring. This breakthrough could have significant applications in healthcare, sports, and beyond.

While devices like smartwatches are able to track heart rate, body temperature, and movement, they are often confined to monitoring specific points on the body. Meanwhile, humans generate vast amounts of data, such as heat, sound, and electrical signals, that these devices fail to capture. Recognizing this gap, a team of engineers from MIT has created a fabric-based computer capable of monitoring the body in a far more comprehensive way.

The fabric computer is embedded with sensors, processors, memory, batteries, and both optical and Bluetooth communications. This allows it to create networks of fibers that offer sophisticated whole-body monitoring. As MIT professor Yoel Fink, who led the research, explains, “Our bodies broadcast gigabytes of data through the skin every second in the form of heat, sound, biochemicals, electrical potentials, and light, all of which carry information about our activities, emotions, and health.” He adds, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could teach clothes to capture, analyze, store, and communicate this important information in the form of valuable health and activity insights?”

The MIT team has been working on embedding electronics into fibers for over a decade. In a recent paper published in Nature, they outlined a major breakthrough that has dramatically increased the capabilities of their fabric computers. One of the key challenges they faced was the mismatch between the flat, 2D layouts of traditional chips and the 3D structure of fibers. This difficulty in connecting components led to failures in earlier versions of their fiber-based devices.

To overcome this, the team designed a novel flexible circuit board. This allowed them to mount electronic components, such as microcontrollers or Bluetooth modules, onto a 2D chip and then fold it into a compact 3D structure. The team connected several of these chips using copper microwires, which were coated in a flexible plastic material. These fibers were then braided with traditional textiles like polyester, wool, and nylon, making them suitable for use in everyday clothing.

The resulting thread-based computers are capable of running basic neural networks to analyze the wearer’s movements. In their tests, the researchers stitched four of these fabric computers into a shirt’s sleeves and a pair of pants’ legs. These sensors could accurately identify various exercises, such as squats, planks, arm circles, and lunges, with 67% accuracy. However, when the devices communicated with each other via Bluetooth and compared their predictions, the accuracy increased to 95%.

This new technology is currently undergoing real-world trials with participants from the US Army and Navy. For a month-long winter research mission in the Arctic, military personnel are wearing merino wool base layers equipped with the fabric computers. These devices will monitor their health and activity levels in real-time, providing crucial data about the body’s response to extreme cold.

“As a leader with more than a decade of Arctic operational experience, one of my main concerns is how to keep my team safe from debilitating cold weather injuries,” said US Army Major Mathew Hefner, commander of the mission. “Conventional systems just don’t provide me with a complete picture. We will be wearing the base layer computing fabrics on us 24/7 to help us better understand the body’s response to extreme cold and ultimately predict and prevent injury.”

Although the technology is particularly useful for military operations in extreme conditions, the potential applications extend far beyond that. Whole-body monitoring could be incredibly valuable in elite sports, helping athletes optimize performance and prevent injury. In healthcare, it could offer real-time insights into patients’ conditions, enabling earlier detection of problems or providing continuous care for those with chronic illnesses.

It may not be long before everyday clothing, like your pants or shirt, holds as much computing power as the first home computers. As this technology advances, it could change the way we think about wearable devices and revolutionize how we monitor health, activity, and well-being in real-time.

By Impact Lab