Smart Industry No.1 2022

Smart Lifestyle One More Thing
source ©: Khachi
The car must also react instantly to
unforeseen circumstances, so, in addition
to very high data rates, the
sensors must exhibit extremely low
latency. Ndip says, 5G just doesn’t
cut it. He adds that 5G is still missing
a couple of critical components
as well as the network intelligence
necessary to handle true hands-off
autonomous driving.
“That's why we need 6G," the scientist
maintains. Although 6G will not
be operational until at least 2030,
Ndip believes that governments
and telcos need to start investing in
the new technology now.
Hardware still needs to be developed
for mobile communications
above 100 GHz but, for most manufacturers,
this is terra incognita as
they have never worked with frequencies
like these before. Typically,
researchers and developers need a
ten-year head start for this kind of
mammoth project, Ndip says. Setting
the necessary specifications
and standards alone will take at
least five years, he believes.
Fraunhofer recently opened its 6G
Innovation Campus in Cottbus – the
so-called iCampus – where it plans
to do research into new networking
and sensor technologies, together
with the local university and two separate
Leibnitz Institutes. The future of
mobile communications, it seems,
just can’t happen fast enough.
Smart Dessous
Myant's new Skiin brand
textiles monitor their
owner's vital functions
and sleeping habits
and can even wake up
sleepy drivers before
they doze off at the
wheel.
Myant
A New ‘Brief’
in Health Monitoring
Underwear is getting a lot smarter
these days. Myant, an innovator in
wearables, has developed a smart
pair of briefs that could potentially
transform healthcare.
Biometric sensors woven into the
fabric of the underwear can measure
things like sleep quality, activity,
stress levels, temperature and
heart condition, to provide some of
the most reliable and effective ways
to detect and prevent health issues,
the company claims.
The Skiin brand fabric sends data
to a corresponding app and onwards
to the cloud platform which
analyses the data to provide guidance
on lifestyle changes and the
information can, with permission,
be shared with healthcare providers.
Underwear is a good choice for
a smart garment because it makes
consistent, close contact with the
body – a must-have for continuous
skin sensors.
Myant’s underwear innovation fits
into the larger trend of e-textiles
and smart clothing, powered by
artificial intelligence and tiny semiconductor
technology. Scientists
are attempting to replace clunky
ECGs and health monitoring devices,
like watches and chest straps,
with comfortable smart garments.
Healthcare providers and developers
believe advances like these will
increase compliance and lead to
better health outcomes.
Smart garments will probably be
able to do much more for us. Sensors
can now be embedded directly
into textiles – similar to weaving additional
yarn into an existing piece
of fabric – or by applying sensors
to the top of the fabric. Either way,
the use cases for e-textiles go far beyond
health monitoring. Smart garments
can to do things like:
• diagnose comfort levels of amputees
by monitoring their interaction
with their artificial limb.
• assess patterns in athletes’ performances
and deliver small electric
shocks to underperforming
muscles.
• wake up sleepy drivers on the
road before accidents occur, using
built-in fatigue monitoring.
• connect to smart home systems
to do things like changing the
thermostat when your body is
cold (or hot).
The latest report by research firm
IDTechE predicts that smart textiles
will be worth over $1.4 billion by
2030. The number of potential applications
and markets for e-textiles
is vast, including military and space,
automotive, haptic suits for virtual
reality, sports and fitness, and assistive
clothing.
source ©: Skiin
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