MIT-designed smart clothing could aid athletic training
In a recent study published in the journal Nature Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) unveiled machine-knitted wearable textile technology.
Special fibres in the “tactile electronics” - or garments - are reportedly able to sense a person’s movement via touch.
Partially funded by Toyota Research Institute, the MIT team (consisting of professors and PhD students) developed stretchable and breathable prototypes with a range of capabilities, including socks and gloves to a full-sized vest.
While the socks can predict motion, for example, the vest has the ability to detect the wearer’s pose and activity.
CSAIL graduate student Yiyue Luo elaborated on the development: “Traditionally, it’s been hard to develop a mass-production wearable that provides high-accuracy data across a large number of sensors.
“When you manufacture lots of sensor arrays, some of them will not work and some of them will work worse than others, so we developed a self-correcting mechanism that uses a self-supervised machine learning algorithm to recognise and adjust when certain sensors in the design are off base.”
There is the potential for athletes and trainers to track, maximise and even teach performance efficiency based on machine analysis of posture.
Image: MIT CSAIL.
