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Smart Attire - Clothing
embedded with sensing, computing, and communication capabilities will
be the next generation of fashion, that will improve lifestyle of our
society by providing various innovative personal monitoring services.
We define personal monitoring services as those software services that
enable monitoring of daily human activities, in the short term (over a
period of a few hours or days) and long term (over a period of several
months). Some of the services that we envision are:
| 1. |
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Elderly people health care: According
to MIT's magazine TECHNOLOGY REVIEW, July/August 2003, "In the United
States alone, the number of people over age 65 is expected to hit 70
million by 2030, doubling from 35 million in 2000, and similar
increases are expected worldwide". This demands provision of health
care for these millions of people, which the current hospitals will be
unable to provide. Smart attire, in the form of personal monitoring
devices will reduce the burden on health care facilities and improve
the lives of people by providing automated periodic health checks. Such
personal monitoring services will reduce the number of visits that an
elderly person makes to a health care facility. The early onset of
diseases can be detected by long term monitoring services. For example,
changes in gait patterns over a longer period of time are indicators of
certain diseases. Short term monitoring services, that can notify
emergency health care facilities in an event of a fall or seizure will
save lives and give peace of mind. |
| 2. |
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Safety:
Safety of people has been a primary concern since time immemorial. In
the quest to make your life safer, smart attire will inform the
nearest health care facility, in an event of an emergency. For example,
if a person is involved in an accident, his or her smart clothes (that
are context aware) will place a call to the nearest health care
facility. In the event that the person disabled to make this call, it
will prove critical. |
| 3. |
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Personal & Medical: Long
term trends can be monitored with the constant use of smart clothing.
These trends can be either for personal or medical reasons. A jogging
enthusiast will be able to maintain a log of his jogging routine and
observe any trends in this pattern. Such personal trends can also help
detect
the onset of diseases in early stages, thus allowing provision of early
treatments. |
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Entertainment:
Apart from the medical, safety, and personal uses of these smart
clothes, it is also a means to have fun. Questions such as "What did I
do on Christmas eve?" and "Was I at Olive Garden when I last
visited New York?" can be answered. |
| The future of your wardrobe |
Figure 1: Future of your wardrobe
The decreasing form factor of computing devices will make it possible
to embed them in clothes in a manner that will be unobtrusive
to the person using them. The Figure below
shows computing devices
starting with the ENIAC (which is more than half a century old) to the
futuristic spec mote
(The spec mote is a device with sensing, computing, and communication
capabilities and the size of about the tip of a pen). Futuristic
computing devices like the spec mote can be easily embedded in
clothing during manufacturing, thus making our vision of smart attire
feasible.
Figure
2: Feasibility of smart attire: Reduction of form factors of computing
devices, from ENIAC to the Spec mote
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