Please choose your delivery country and your customer group
Textile products can be defined as bio-communicating when they incorporate electronic sensors and devices that allow remote monitoring and communication with other systems, process data and information, act on biological functions, on micro-climate and environment conditions of the person wearing them. Sensors are those devices that allow detecting physiological or environmental conditions, useful to understand if the person is active or at rest, warm or cold, perspiring or not, etc. Sensors have been studied and applied to textiles for measuring skin hydration and microcirculation. The difficulties encountered in the choice and installation of the sensors concern both their miniaturisation and the flexibility required to be integrated into a textile product, in addition to their powering and to the transmission of signals. The latter problem can be solved by the fibrous components of the textile: conductive fibres have long since been available and can transmit the signals from the sensor to the processing device and also allow it to be fed by normal batteries. The actuators are the third element for the realisation of intelligent apparel. They may be of the electro-mechanical kind, for example, to open or close pores of valves, or else to stimulate artificial muscles. In the near future the elderly population in Europe will grow considerably. A jacket has been developed, fitted with sensors to know the position of the person and therefore learn of possible fall. Another vest allows monitoring of respiration (RT) and radial pulse (RP), and the interval between RP and RT of an EECG signal made it possible to estimate the systolic pressure of the patient wearing it. (bilingual document: Italian/English)