DailyST – Smart Textile as a Daily Routine – is a project created with the aim to identify smart clothing that can facilitate and improve people’s daily lives. The garments will be designed together with the users and will be equipped with invisible and imperceptible textile sensors, especially conceived to assist them in everyday life, in a non-invasive way. They will be externally connected and can be very useful for a very large part of the population, with particular focus on the most vulnerable groups. This smart textile clothing is also an expression of sustenability in all its components, from the choice of materials to the consumption cycle and the product’s end-of-life.
The project, financed by the European Union and by the Lombardy Region (Regione Lombardia )as part of the Fashiontech Call – Research and development projects for sustainable fashion- is coordinated by ComfTech, in partnership with MediaClinics and HBM Shifton.
Technological progress is transforming garments into a platform able to integrate in the fabric increasingly imperceptible and invisible sensors, which are also functional and versatile, to support people in everyday life. These non-invasive wearables stay true to their mission, captured in the slogan: “EveryOne EveryWhere EveryTime”.
DailyST uses a human-centered design approach: we observe future users in their everyday actions to understand how textile technology can support them in their daily life. On top of that, we aim at creating sustainable Smart Fashion solutions, both from a social-ethical point of view, technological and environmental, while maintaining the attention also to the aesthetic look and design side.
In particular, during the two years of research for this project, three use cases will be addressed for the development of specific Fashion Tech wearable systems:
- Elderly people in home care (safety, rehabilitation, external geolocation)
- Women who had a mastectomy or cancer surgery (sport, psychological and emotional well-being, community)
- Children and adolescents suffering from obesity (physical activity, emotional state, psychological support, gamification).
The final result of the project will be a collection of smart-textile systems, consisting of coordinated clothing and accessories, that see the integration of different technological components depending on the use, including sensors for the detection of physiological parameters, actuators or panels for tactile and visual activation.
Each system will consist of three fundamental parts:
- A garment and / or a smart accessory, equipped with sensors and textile circuitry
- An electronic device that can be extracted and removed, capable of recording and transmitting data
- A cloud platform for data processing and storage
- A real-time visualisation software (mobile app).
In essence, the DailyST project presents the creation of an integrated and complete textile system. Created together with users and their caregivers, the DailyST project is designed to support both in their everyday life, with maximum comfort, and without sacrificing style.
Smart-textile systems are designed to reach the widest possible population at an affordable price, with particular attention not only to the fashion side, but also to inclusiveness and social and environmental sustainability.
