Ep. 121: Advancements in electronic textiles

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Ep. 121: Advancements in electronic textiles

The Textile Innovation Podcast speaks with Pasindu Lugoda, senior lecturer in medical device design at Nottingham Trent University.

WTiN: Hello and welcome to textile innovation hosted by WTiN My name is Abi, and I'm the Features Editor and your podcast host. Each month, we will be joined by a special guest to join me and my colleagues as we deep dive into what's new, what's interesting, and what admissible innovations have hit the market recently, we cover everything on the podcast, from sustainability to start ups and the latest research and development, plus we quiz the experts in the field about their products and ideas across the huge spectrum that is the textile industry. So no matter what your interest is, WTiN have you covered, and we can connect you to everything you need to know right here from our central hub in the UK.

In this episode, I am joined by Pasindu Lugoda, a senior lecturer in medical device design at Nottingham Trent University. I speak to Pasindu about his recent research in washable and durable magnetic fields, sensing electronic textiles. He discussed the development of future and smart wearable clothing and opportunities for textiles in this sector.

Hi, Pasindu, please. Could you tell our listeners about your career today and your areas of research?

Lugoda: Yeah. So currently, I'm a senior lecturer at Nottingham Trent University. My area of research is smart textiles, or electronic electronic textiles. So the idea is we put miniature electronic chips or actuators within the fibres or yarns, textile yarns or fibres. That's what we are trying to do for my research.

WTiN: Amazing. Could you tell me what attracted you to smart textiles and what potential do you see for this sector?

Lugoda: So what attracted me to smart Textiles is kind of a long story. I did my degree in electronic engineering University of Nottingham. Then I actually, after my degree, I went home to Sri Lanka, and I couldn't find a job in electronics per se in Sri Lanka, so I ended up working in a textile factory. But when I was working there, worked there for two years, I was always trying to use my I was trying to find a way to use my knowledge in electronics. But I couldn't find, like, a clear avenue until I found a PhD in electronic textiles. And that's what kind of led me down the smart textile path. And the potential for the industry, I think, is quite huge, because we've been wearing clothes for like, a long time, right? We've been wearing clothes since, I don't know, like the people say it's the oldest profession wearing making clothes, so it's been there for a long time, and it just makes a lot of sense to have the smart make these textiles smart, because all if you look at the T shirts we're wearing, it's quite dumb, and we always wear it. Why can't we make this smart and engineer products out of it? So it makes a lot of sense. So I think the potential for smart Textiles is quite large, but it's a quite difficult field. I think to make things the progress, I think.

WTiN: That makes complete sense. And just going off that obviously, as you say, it's quite difficult and smart, variable technology has it kind of was really loud a few years ago. Then it's quieting down, and slowly we see a revival, if you would agree. What do you think has prompted this? And are researchers like yourself approaching smart textiles differently? Say this second time round.

Lugoda: So if you look at smart textiles, I think it's been there since, since the 1900s there were first like heating garments and things in the 1900s so it's, it's been around. It's just not really caught on for some reason. So what happens is, it has been going through cycles like this. So it's, it's gone through a cycle, then it comes, it goes away, then it comes back again. But right now, I think the cool thing is, you have all these miniature technologies that can go into textiles, and then you got this machine learning and other sorts of AI driven analysis of data and things like this that can be used with smart textiles. So I think now there's a big potential for it to really go big. I think biggest issue with smart Textiles is possibly the use of adoption. So we've not seen it as much as you and I. Both are not wearing anything smart with we're not wearing any smart textiles at the moment, right? So, yeah, I think it's been that's been the difficult bit for smart textiles to crack. I think, yeah.

WTiN: And how, obviously, it kind of goes in cycles. And how do you feel researchers are approaching this particular cycle?

Lugoda: I think so we've been doing more of the stuff, what we've been doing in the past as well. I think there's other researchers that have come in. So the good thing is, the research community has grown, which is quite nice to see, because there was not, there were few people doing it in the past, but now I think there's lot more interest in it than the lot more people getting involved. So this means that there's huge potential that it might actually come to something, because someone will crack the issues that's there. So I think it's so what we do so in my regards, I can speak for myself, we've been trying to integrate more and more technologies into the textile, trying to make it even smarter. And even, what I try to do now is try to integrate actuators as well as sensors, so you can create, like smart devices in a way that can do that. Can have, you know, do a closed loop system, if that makes sense, so it can provide intelligence, actuation and as well as sensing, so you can do multiple things.

WTiN: That's great. And could you tell listeners a little bit more about bit more about your research? I know that you published a paper recently. You just touched on it then. But how and why have you integrated these sensors, integrated textile yarn, I believe, and I apologise if I pronounce this wrong, but magnetoresistive sensors.

Lugoda: Yeah, so, so the My PhD was also integrating miniature air surface mount devices within electron within these braided yarns. So my PhD work was also around this. But then during my postdoc, we started working with more flexible structures. So the idea was this surface mount devices. These are like these, you know, these small devices that that that's, if you take apart your phone or something, you'll see a lot of these miniature devices, right, that's connected to a PCB board. So what we, were doing was we were taking those sensors and things, putting it within graded yarns. But during my postdoc and stuff, we decided, okay, so I worked with Dr nikomons in Reader, and we were thinking of putting completely flexible structures, without even the surface mount devices, within the yarn. So this was my initial papers were on temperature sensors, but recently, we decided to put a magnetic, magnetoresistive sensors within the fibers and to utilize that. That was the latest paper. Do you want me to go on about the paper?

WTiN: Yeah, it would be great to find out, like a little bit more about your process and what the results were.

Lugoda: Yeah. So the initial idea with this magnetosis two sensors was that, you know, text, textile based touch sensors have been there for a while, like switches, you know, like this, sort of capacitive and sort of switches. You might have seen it in different papers and things like this. One of the limitations of that is, you know, like you know, you have these sort of switches on your body, but you know, textiles rub against everything. You know you're sitting right now your textile is touching your stuff and you're moving around, your hands knock on it. Your chair knocks on it right so it's very prone to accidental activation. So the idea was, can you create a system that is not so prone to accidental activation, where the user actually needs to approach it in order have to be, you know, have to intend to activate it, for it to activate. So that was why we went with Magneto resistive sensors. So if you need a miniature magnetic field coming close to the magnet, can be Go, go on your finger of a glove, or it could be on a ring or something like this. And you can bring that close to your sensor, and then only it activates. There are these capacitive sort of technologies that do this sort of stuff as well. But with the problem with the capacity also is that it's it can be activated unintentionally, if there's some movement above alternative ways, also the technique used by Project Jacquard Google Project Jacquard, where you had to remember certain things like double tap or move or something like this, in order to activate these devices. But I don't know why, but project Jakarta didn't get adopted so well. So I think they've stopped the platform now, if I'm not mistaken. So one of the things, so I use that jacket as well, and one of the things is that you need to remember certain stuff. And you know, you need to remember a double tap, is this? This is that you get used to it, but then it's much easier. I think. If you have some sort of sensor with that, you can activate intentionally. And you know, okay, this is play. This is this, right? So you can see it on the textile itself, what kind of it represents.

WTiN: Yeah, that's really interesting. Thank you. And how is the system that you've designed, like durable and flexible in terms of its design.

Lugoda: So what we do is we incorporate it in a 1d structure. 1d we call it. It's not really 1d but, you know, like a, like a string sort of structure, right? And what we have is we have a small. Or something that's not so flexible because we have the soldering and the encapsulation there, and the rest of it is quite flexible. So even with normal textiles, if you look at like cotton textiles and stuff, you might have areas that are a bit thick, that might not be as flexible, but the rest of the area is as flexible like a normal textile. So when we incorporate these sensors within the braided yarns, the cool thing is that that, you know, some areas, that most areas, are completely flexible, except, like a miniature dot, maybe, like a few millimetres, couple of millimetres, maybe that's rigid, maybe maximum five, something around five millimetres, or, you know, something like this. That's rigid. Rest of it is flexible. So it's extremely like a normal textile. You can crush it, you can, you know, it shears. You can do anything a normal textile can do, basically.

WTiN: And what were the main challenges you faced while developing your smart textiles?

Lugoda: So this, this project, has been going on for a while, in a way, yeah, so if you look at the integration techniques, we've been developing it for a long time. So it's been, say, it started off with my supervisor, who's the PhD my PhD supervisor to like this his idea of incorporating surface mountain sensors. And then we've gone into now flexible structures, and we've been engineering this in such a way that it's durable. One of the biggest problems is to make it durable, because there's an interface between the soft, between the hard electronics and the soft textile, which is the textile structures are more softer, flexible, and you have hard electronics in a way, so you need to make sure that interface is quite well done. And in this case, even though it's a flexible sensor, right, the flexibility of the flexible strip and the textile is not highly comparable, because flexible sensors, you can't share it, but textiles can undergo share so things like this. So we need to make sure that, you know, the interconnection is done well. So that has been what we've been working on. And I think this is now, this paper is kind of the thing that, you know, shows that we've, it's, a challenge we're trying to crack still, yeah, yeah, we've cracked it, but it still can be improved.

WTiN: I think that makes complete sense. And then looking at like more of the practicalities of smart textiles, what would you say the significance of textiles being washable is?

Lugoda: So this is a important. I think this is quite important, that the textiles are washable, at least now, because we have to wash our clothes, right? Normally, I wash my underwear every day, or, you know, T shirts every day, otherwise you're going to smell so, so you need to make sure that it's washable. So in so integrating electronics within the textile, you need to make sure those either those electronics are washable, or those electronics could be removed during the washing process. But if you have to, just imagine, you have a wardrobe and things, you want to put it in the wash, washing machine, and you have to remove these electronics every time. This is not so practical, I think so. Ideally you want it to be you normally, if you're just usual daily wear, you just want to remove it, put it in a washing machine or your dryer, and you just take it out. So you know, this is what people are used to. People are not going to change their attitude to its clothes, probably for a while. So this is why I think it needs to be washable. Although I was listening to a professor at some conference that was saying we need to do self cleaning clothes at some stage. I mean, this is a cool idea, yeah. But the issue is, it's still not here, so we still need to wash our clothes. So in order to make our electronics, in order to make our Smart Text as adaptable like usable. We need to have be washable. It needs to be washable. Yeah.

WTiN: That would be great to have self cleaning clothes.

Lugoda: Quite easy, right?

WTiN: Oh, so much easier. And coming back to your research, do you believe that your design could revolutionize electronic textiles? And what? Opportunities do you think it could open for the sector?

Lugoda: So I think the touchless sensing thing could be integrated into many technology, with many technologies, with sensors, with actuators and different stuff. So the technology itself could be quite useful for the industry. You can integrate it with, I don't know, with different sensors you want to turn on or off, right with touchless, or you can have it as an interactive device with gaming platforms and things like this, which could be quite useful if you have imagine you have a glove or something that you know, and then you can activate certain things on your T shirt and create more immersive gaming platforms. So this is quite useful, and even for rehabilitation. For some rehabilitation applications, it could be useful. You can integrate like this technology with VR and create immersive rehabilitation platforms. The other thing on the on the fact that the integration method means that it's not just limited to magnetoresistive sensors. We can integrate any sort of sensor within this braided yarns using this technique, and once it's integrated, you can sense most parameters. So let's say some researcher wants to check humidity or something like this, they can still integrate those sensors the same way, and you can integrate it into the cloth. The cool thing about this is, because it's within the braided yarn, you don't really see the electronics, so it's it's like a normal textiles really, if you a little thick, because the braided yarn is a bit thick. But if you can make a little bit thicker clothing or some sort of design, this shouldn't be a problem.

WTiN: That's great. No, it sounds like so much opportunity in terms of the design. And do you Would you ever plan to commercialise this technology?

Lugoda: So at the moment, I would say I'm a bit more of an academic, although I would like to do some commercializing bit, but I'm a bit more of an academic. I would like to develop technologies, and I normally work with the manufacturers and things just to see if I can get it out. And I always tell my students, right, if you want to do a startup, I will help you. Right? I think I like the idea. I used to like the idea of doing a startup back in the day, but I've become a little bit more, bit more into academia over the years. Over the past few years, I've been I like making the technologies and hope working, trying to talk with industry and seeing if someone can take it forward. So I think this is, this has been my strategy, and this is what I hope to do.

WTiN: It must be like really exciting, speaking to all those different manufacturers and seeing the various potential that could happen. Could you tell me if there's anything else there within smart tech styles that you are currently or plan to work on.

Lugoda: So these days, I'm working on this technology called exoskeleton. We call it exoskeleton because it's a textile-based exoskeleton that we try to develop. The idea is we got a small grant from the rehab technology network sometime back to develop these exoskeletons. The idea is, like I said, to have actuators and sensors together and to do intelligent sort of actuation, so you kind of sense the movements of a person and provide actuation. So you can integrate multiple sensors, or something like this, and then you can get feedback from the patient's movements and then provide the appropriate sort of actuation that is required for the person. So this is what we're trying to develop these days. So we've done some preliminary work, which is now we're trying to publish this work. We've just got most of the preliminary results, and we are just getting the publication ready. So this is, this is what I'm interested been developing these days. The idea is you can have the sensors and actuators together, and you can create a closed loop intelligent system that provides appropriate assistance or resistance, mainly for rehabilitation. So if you look at people with stroke, with strokes or some or muscular skeletal conditions, they need rehabilitation for so many years, and the idea is, can you create like a textile that can assist with their rehabilitation, that can go the rehabilitation journey with them and make their lives a bit easier. And you know, they can get get on with their everyday lives, as well as help them regain their strength. So this is, this is what I'm doing now. So it's, it's a difficult challenge, and it's, it's because a lot of sense, different senses and actuators, but. Hopefully we'll be able to crack it. Excited to see more about that when it gets ready for publication.

WTiN: That sounds super exciting. And my final question is, what is your vision and predictions for the smart textile sector moving forward, and what barriers do you believe the sector will need to overcome to move forward?

Lugoda: So I think this has been there since the beginning of time with smart textiles, I would say, is the fact that, you know, it's a combination of different fields. So it's a combination of electronics, textiles and maybe materials, and even depending on the application, it might be a healthcare application or something. So it's a combination of different fields. So what kind of happens? The problems that are there is that most of these industries have developed on their own in a way, and they have their own techniques. So textile machinery works in certain way. It's not compatible with modern day electronics. So electronic companies don't know how to like they develop electronics for normal phones and things like this, not so much for a textile. So trying to find a way for these two different industries to work together is where the where, what will progress smart textiles. And I also think it might also need a killer application. So it might need some sort of killer application that gets people user adaptability, where people get used to wearing smart textiles, right? And I think this is important. And we haven't had, we've had some really good applications, but we've not had one of those big applications where everyone uses it, like the smartphone when it came out, everyone now uses it, right? So we need something like that. And then I think most of the industry will come together to develop these technologies. So I think most, there are more. A lot of companies have a division, a small division, working on smart textiles, right? So when I was doing my PhD, I did a research internship at Microsoft. And they also have, they used to, at least, I don't know now, but they used to have a smart textiles, small team working on smart texts. So there's different companies have smart textile teams, but I think, but it's, I don't think they've gone in completely, yeah, as in, they've gone in okay, because they haven't really invested a huge sum of money to make it viable. So like, pressure check out from Google came, but then it didn't, people didn't use it as much, maybe, and then it just died away, right? So this is, this has been the problem, because things come and then it just goes away, so they don't invest more. So this, this is the challenge. But I think now, with all these machine learning techniques and and the miniature electronics that's there, there's a huge chance for smart texters to take off. So I think this is the opportunity that I see.

WTiN: Amazing. What you said, it's going to take one thing and then suddenly everything will just come together.

Lugoda: Yeah, I think, I think that's what's going to happen. I hope it'll happen, certainly, obviously, because it's the field I'm working in, so I hope it'll happen. So I think one thing, someone would do something really 10. I think that's why it's more it's really interesting that there's a lot of new researchers working in the field, because obviously they will have better ideas that more people in the field means there might be someone that might do something that might break the system and get us into a place where smart techs has become an everyday thing. So this is what I'm hoping for.

WTiN: So yeah, that would be amazing, and hopefully it'll be some of your research on your students.

Lugoda: Hopefully, right, but like, if I'm lucky.

WTiN: So yeah, thank you so much for Pasindu for speaking to us today on the WTiN textile innovation podcast.

Lugoda: Thanks for having me.

WTiN: Thank you so much for listening. If you have any questions, you can reach out over x formally, Twitter at WTiN, comment or contact me directly at Abby underscore WTiN, if you are interested in sponsoring an episode of the podcast, please email sales at WTiN.com thank you for listening, and we'll see you next month.