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Computer Science:
Electronic Textiles Light Up Fashion World, Offer New Platform for Research and Education

Middle school students stitch electronics into their clothes and accessories at a workshop on "Wearable Electronics," sponsored by CU's Science Discovery program.

Flashing LEDs in eye-catching colors and designs may be the latest trend hitting the fashion industry, but they're also indicative of research advances in wearable computing technology.

Electronic textiles and other wearable computing systems are a relatively new field, launched only a decade ago. The materials are still exotic—not available at your local sewing store—but are accelerating in popularity as clothing makers develop marketable applications.

Fabrics with embedded electronics allow for a sophisticated look, but electrical components also can also be exposed in certain applications so that people can see signals being sent or received. There are potential applications in the consumer, industrial, medical, wellness, educational, and military domains, according to the IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers.

Doctoral student Leah Buechley, who is part of the Craft Technologies Group working with CU Professor and President's Teaching Scholar Michael Eisenberg, has developed a variety of projects to demonstrate wearable computing.

Examples of her work include a temperature-sensing hat with a pompom that changes from red to blue according to the ambient temperature, and communicating shirts, which incorporate infrared transmitters and receivers along with LEDs and vibrating motors to alert the wearer when a signal is received. In one possible scenario, the shirts could be programmed to send and receive alerts whenever a friend comes within sight, Buechley says.

A wearable display is woven out of surface-mount LEDs and glass and metal beads.

Buechley also has developed fashionable LED displays, including an attractive tank top and bracelet that can be programmed to display cellular automata or scrolling text.

"It has been fun to wear some of this stuff out," says Buechley, who has an undergraduate degree in physics as well as interests in theater, dance, and photography. "You're conspicuous wearing it, but it's fun."

A new, interdisciplinary project that Buechley embarked on this spring involves using Bluetooth technology to send wireless signals generated by a dancer's movements to create or control accompanying music. The project is a collaboration between Buechley and graduate students in the music and theatre and dance departments.Wearable computing components are either made entirely of fabric or packaged so that they can be stitched to cloth. Buechley developed a technique for constructing "iron-on" circuits, which starts with attaching a heat-activated adhesive to a conductive fabric and then using a laser-cutter to score the circuit pattern onto the fabric. By ironing the pattern onto a second piece of fabric, soldering on a socket, and plugging in a microcontroller, the e-textile microcontroller package can then be stitched onto a garment.

Conductive thread is used to make the electrical connections, and thick fabric paint can be applied over the stitching as an insulator to prevent short circuits. All of the components except the batteries are washable, Buechley says.

Buechley's research goes beyond developing the engineering techniques and design aspects of wearable clothing, however, to include creating new educational tools—a focus that the entire Craft Technologies Group shares.

Leah Buechley models a tank top that she designed to display dynamic patterns such as scrolling text or mathematical simulations. The top can be programmed wirelessly using a Palm Pilot.

She developed an "e-textile construction kit," which she has used in two semester-long workshops on wearable computing at local schools. Through these and other short-term workshops, Buechley believes the educational kit could be a powerful medium to engage a diverse range of students in computing and electronics.

"I'm especially excited about the ability of these materials to engage girls in computer science and electrical engineering—fields that are overwhelmingly populated with males," she says. Although wary of gender-based stereotypes, Buechley says electronic textiles may appeal more to some girls than remote controlled cars or robots, which are traditionally used to introduce embedded computing concepts.

E-textile website: www.cs.colorado.edu/~buechley
Department website: www.cs.colorado.edu