Towards the Internet of Underthings

#WearableTech #InternetOfThings Once upon a time, the wires in an undergarment merely provided structural support. Now, people may have all sorts of wires and wireless devices hidden under their clothing. Here are some interesting examples.

• The Foxleaf Bra delivers cancer-fighting drugs through the wearer's skin.
• An aunt’s death led Kemisola Bolarinwa to develop a wearable device that can pick up Nigeria’s most common cancer much earlier.
  
• The @tweetingbra reminds women to examine themselves. (?)
• The Lumo Lift helps improve posture through app-enabled coaching.
• Various manufacturers (including Clothing+, OMsignal and SmartLife) produce health vests and sportswear packed with monitors to track your heart rate, breathing rate and the amount of calories you've burnt.

We are now encouraged to account for everything we do: footsteps, heartbeats, posture. Until recently this kind of micro-attention to oneself was regarded as slightly obsessional, nowadays it seems to be perfectly normal. And of course these data are collected, and sent to the cloud, and turned into someone else's big data. (Good luck with those privacy settings, by the way.)

If a device is classed as a medical device, it will be subject to various forms of accreditation and regulation. For this reason, many device makers will be careful to avoid any specific medical claims, but devices that offer some health advice are considered a borderline area.

Another borderline area is hi-tech underpants that protect men from the evil rays allegedly produced by all those wireless devices. Especially the radiation from mobile phones. (Including the Bluetooth that links your underwear to your smartphone.) One brand of underpants that claims to use a mesh of pure silver to create a Faraday cage around the genitals has been banned by the UK Advertising Standards Authority from making any medical claims.

Or maybe you could just switch the whole lot off.

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The Wearable Medical Device in Your Future…Is Now! (Marketing Research Association, 28 April 2015)

Jennie Agg, The hi-tech bra that helps you beat breast cancer - and other clothes that can treat or prevent illness (Daily Mail, 10 March 2015)

Valentine Benjamin, Can a bra detect breast cancer? This Nigerian entrepreneur thinks so (Guardian, 9 Aug 2023)

Sarah Blackman, Student designs cancer-fighting bra (Lingerie Insight, 10 Feb 2015)

Britta O'Boyle, SmartLife clothing claims to make sure you never miss a beat (Pocket-Lint, 12 March 2015) 

Rob Crilly, Hi-tech pants "protect sperm from phone waves" (Telegraph 22 October 2014)

Julie Papanek, How Wearable Startups Can Win Big In The Medical Industry (TechCrunch, 19 Feb 2015)

Hannah Jane Parkinson, Lumo Lift review: posture-tracking gadget is a straight shooter (Guardian, 14 November 2014) 

Helen Popkin, Tweeting bra exposed: Genuine support or publicity lift? (NBC News 25 October 2013)

Meera Senthilingam, How a high-tech bra could be your next doctor (CNN, 11 May 2015)

Brendan Seibel, High-Tech Underwear for Adventurous Geeks (21 April 2010)

Mark Sweney, Hi-tech underwear advert banned (Guardian 13 August 2014)

Dan Sung, World Cancer Day - The Real Wonderbra (Wearable, 14 Feb 2015)  


Related Posts Have you got big data in your underwear (December 2014)

Weaving in three dimensions

A garment is essentially a three-dimensional object. And yet the most common way of producing garments is from flat sheets of material - for example cloth or leather - that can be cut into pieces and then sewn into items of clothing. So we have a complex interaction between two patterns - the weaving pattern on the cloth and the cutting pattern for the tailor.

Some clothing designers have started to experiment with 3D printers, producing amazing fashion dresses and accessories.

Designer: Danit Peleg

Designers: Francis Bitonti and Michael Schmidt

Designer: Anouk Wipprecht

 

For more examples, check out designers like Continuum Fashion.

But these costumes are mostly monochrome, and made from artificial materials such as nylon. Great for catwalk or party, or even a fashionable beach, but not exactly everyday wear. So instead of 3D printing, what about 3D weaving, using traditional materials? Here's something in linen.

Designer: Chen-Hsiang Hu

 

The industrial designer Oluwaseyi Sosanya has developed a new 3D weaving method, which allows not only the exact shape and size of the garment to be varied to the exact requirements of the wearer, but also the qualities of the woven fabric. He has been experimenting with footwear, where the density of the sole can vary from one part of the foot to another.

"With this [weaving system] you can pre-programme the density. At the ball of your foot, you may want a denser material. Right at the arch of your foot, you might want a softer material. At the heel, you might want a denser material. You can have that in one go."

Furthermore, Sosanya's system allows the footwear to be customized to the wearer's requirements, from sports to orthopaedics.

"Your foot is completely different to my foot,” said Sosanya. “We walk different, our cadence is different. All of these things are factors which play into the performance of our footwear. Now with 3D printing, you can scan your foot and you can scan an insole or even a whole sole or the whole shoe at some point. The designer and the chiropodist can say that you need to remove some material here and you can correct your walking. You have all of these opportunities now where you can do customisation around footwear." 

Of course, there is some history here. According to Wikipedia, perforated paper tapes were first used to control looms around 1725, but this technology did not become widespread until Jacquard switched to punched cards around 1801.

Source: Wikipedia

And according to the New Testament, Jesus wore a seamless robe for his crucifixion. One source (repeated around the internet, and now here) argues that this indicates an early Palestinian form of 3D weaving.

"Completely seamless garments, like the one Jesus wore, were unique to Palestine. They were woven on upright looms that used two sets of vertical warp threads, one at the front and one at the back of a crossbar. The weaver would alternate his shuttle, which carried the horizontal weft thread, from the front part of the web to the back, 'thus creating a cylindric piece of fabric,' says one reference work. A seamless tunic would likely have been a rare possession, and the soldiers considered it a desirable one." (Watchtower, 1 July 2009 p22)

If we combine these ancient and modern innovations, we can conceive of a very sophisticated form of personalization, in which the pattern on the cloth can be perfectly aligned with the cut of the garment, regardless of the size and shape of the wearer, without wasting material. And the material can be reinforced at elbows and shoulders. And the whole garment can be woven while you wait. No more child tailors in Far Eastern sweatshops then.

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Related Posts: New Economics of Manufacturing (November 2015)

Wikipedia: Jacquard loom, Punched card, Seamless robe of Jesus

3D-woven fabric creates organically shaped lamps that glow in the dark
(de zeen, 11 April 2014)

Oluwaseyi Sosanya invents 3D weaving machine (de zeen, 23 June 2014)

Alec Buren, Danit Peleg 3D prints entire ready-to-wear fashion collection at home (3Ders, 24 July 2015)

Simon Cosimo, Electroloom - the world's first 3D fabric printer - launches on Kickstarter (3Ders, 16 May 2015)

Simon Cosimo, Fashion designer adds a third dimension to apparel design with '3D weaving' (3Ders, 31 July 31)

Shane Hickey, The innovators: the 3D weaving machine putting new heart into soles (Guardian 3 May 2015)

Tanya Lewis, 3D Printing Weaves Its Way into Fashion (LiveScience, 7 August 2013)

Robert Sullivan, Envisioning the Future of 3-D Fashion: Welcome to the Virtual Dressing Room (Vogue, 3 September 2014)

Updated 30 December 2021

Have you got big data in your underwear?

Apparently, women's breasts aren't all the same. (Who knew?) True+Co. uses an algorithm based on customer feedback to recommend comfortable and flattering bras for its customers. A visitor to the website completes a questionnaire, and the website recommends some suitable bras. If the customer orders the bra, she then completes another questionnaire providing feedback on comfort and appearance. To date, over a million women have completed the questionnaire, providing 15 million data points.

@tetradian reckoned this is a great example of #bizmodel #bigdata for mass-uniqueness. But I didn't see this example the same way: I don't see anything here that turns Mass Customization into what Tom likes to call Mass Uniqueness.

Tom's favourite example of "mass uniqueness" is Picasso. I bet the algorithm couldn't find a bra for the breasts of Picasso's Demoiselles (NSFW).

Breasts of Picasso’s Demoiselle (NSFW)…

A single questionnaire, even from a million women, doesn't get into the big data league. Maybe it would when they start analysing pictures and videos of customer breasts, rather than relying on a simple questionnaire.

Or if the company were to fit sensors to its underwear, monitoring stretch during a range of activities, collecting millions of data points every minute via the Internet of Things.

Do you think I'm joking? Microsoft is working on a Smart Bra, which will monitor the mood of the wearer and detect stress. The Daily Mail suggests that this will help women to lose weight.

To stop women reaching for the cookie jar when things hit a low, Microsoft's new prototype bra predicts when the wearer is likely to comfort eat and warns against it. The software company's high-tech undergarment features sensors in the cup pockets and side panels that detect changes in heart rate, skin temperature and stress levels - apparent precursors to overeating. All of the data is then streamed via Bluetooth to a smartphone app providing real-time mood-triggered eating alerts.

Now that's what I call big data. Scary, huh?

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Valentine Benjamin, Can a bra detect breast cancer? This Nigerian entrepreneur thinks so (Guardian, 9 Aug 2023)

Jillian Goodman, Cup Size Isn’t Everything (Fast Company, October 2014)

Tom Graves, On Mass Uniqueness (23 May 2014)

April Joyner, Big Data: Coming Soon to Your Bra? (Fast Forward, 6 September 2014)

Hayley Krischer, The underappreciated artistry of the professional bra fitter (Guardian 4 June 2015)

Sadie Whitelocks, Supporting your body in more ways than one! The high-tech bra designed to stop women from comfort eating (Daily Mail, 28 November 2013)

Microsoft working on a smart bra to measure mood (BBC News, 3 December 2013)


See also Towards the Internet of Underthings (November 2015), Weaving in three dimensions (November 2015), On the Ethics of Technologically Mediated Nudge (May 2019), Trial by Ordeal (July 2019)

 
Links added 16 July 2020, 9 August 2023