GFD writes: "The EETimes has a story about a DARPA program to develop a new class of electronics and system architecture based on smart fabrics. Some of the more interesting challenges include networking protocols and fault tolerance. Routing between buttons? What happens if your CPU gets a rip??"
Battlefield diagnostic shirts...
by
BMazurek
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
A friend of mine did his M.Sc. in mobile computing. He was attending a conference in probably 97 or 98, and there was a guy there giving a presentation on just this sort of thing.
The primary purpose in this case seemed to be diagnosing battlefield injuries as they happen. If someone gets injured in the battlefield, the piercing of the shirt would be used as a trigger to contact medical personnel. The positioning of the broken fibres would give the location of the wound. The fibres would also convey information about the amount of blood as well as any other fluids that might be present at the wound site. They would use built-in sensors to attempt to determine the trajectory of the projectile.
The result? Medical teams could be dispatched immediately, and would know (more or less) the kind of wound, and what they were likely to find when they got to the wounded soldier.
Of course, the requirements were also for a shirt that could be field washed several hundred times, and costed relatively little.
Slashdot Mirror
The primary purpose in this case seemed to be diagnosing battlefield injuries as they happen. If someone gets injured in the battlefield, the piercing of the shirt would be used as a trigger to contact medical personnel. The positioning of the broken fibres would give the location of the wound. The fibres would also convey information about the amount of blood as well as any other fluids that might be present at the wound site. They would use built-in sensors to attempt to determine the trajectory of the projectile.
The result? Medical teams could be dispatched immediately, and would know (more or less) the kind of wound, and what they were likely to find when they got to the wounded soldier.
Of course, the requirements were also for a shirt that could be field washed several hundred times, and costed relatively little.
Sounded like an extremely cool presentation...