Smart Textiles: From Niche to Mainstream

Current technology supports only special-purpose, low-volume textiles, garments, and electronics. Moreover, the textile, electronic, and software industries have different product cycles, cultures, and price models, creating scores of practical problems for smart textiles. Mass producing smart cloth will require decoupling the textile production from concrete sensing apps and moving the complexity to generic electronics and software--creating wearable sensing as an app.