SimpleSkin · Cheap, textile based whole body sensor sensing system for interaction, physiological monitoring and activity recognition

We propose a fundamentally new approach for creating smart textiles and functional garments. The basic idea is to separate sensing textile production, garment manufacturing, the hardware platform, and the software implementation by well-defined abstractions and interfaces. A major innovation is the development of a mass-producible generic sensing fabric, which will allow capacitive, resistive or inductive modes, to measure movement, electrical body signals, activities, and change in body capacity. The sensor density and intelligent signal processing will compensate the simplicity of single sensors. Based on these fabrics sensing ready" garments can be produced, that are with respect to their properties, looks, production process and price virtually undistinguishable from today's standard garments. We expect that in the long term this will lead to functional clothes becoming the default, much like today smart, sensor-enabled phones have become the mainstream. The "sensor ready" garments become part of a wearable computing system, by adding hardware, that allows self-organizing, dynamic and adaptive processing of input signals converting the specific garment into a general wearable sensor with a dedicated high-level sensing interface. By these means we create an abstraction layer and platform on which application developers can create wearable sensing application, than are independent of the actual hardware they run on. For example, this will allow an application developer to create a sports monitoring application, that includes body posture, movement, and heard rate, which can be deployed to any available "sensing ready" shirt. This will empower a larger number of potential developers to contribute their creativity. The approach taken in SimpleSkin has great potential to build up the foundation for a new era in smart clothing. It aims at moving personal wearable monitoring from a niche topic into major industry with the potential of revolutionizing what we wear."