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??"
A bit much?
by
InfinityWpi
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Am I the only person here who things not everything needs to be 'networked' or 'smart' or 'e-' or '-net' or anything else? For god's sake, leave some things simple!
the girl in the story had a whole dress made of
nanotechnology that could pump water out of it
or change its color shape design etc.
one of the guys had an overcoat that protected him
from certain air borne nano technology and also
some bio hazards too
both were all kevlar-ish etc
think about it,
one set of clothes for your entire life
but a wardrobe of anything you could think of
;)
come to think of it
as a coder who has put in at least a couple of 24+hrs stints
it would be nice if these things could perform some hygienne based tasks too!!
I completely agree. Some things definately do NOT need to be 'smart' or otherwise "enhanced". On the other hand, some things that are enhanced would be great. I'd love to be able to pay a parking ticket right on the ticket. When paid, the ticket changes to a reciept.
Flags that were smart would be cool. Smart fabrics in general are neat because they have the potential to require less closet space. It would be very cool to wear a suit that could change color from business grey or green to funeral black. You wouldn't have to go home to go to the wake of a coworker. Similarly, road workers outfits could change color from the usual to International Emergency Orange (yes, that color has a name)when they're on the job. Smart curtains would be neat, ones that can change color when you want to redecorate, or change opacity on demand (this already exists in windows, though).
I'd hate to see a "smart" glove (I don't want my clothes to know where my hands have been), or a smart beer can (unless it can make more beer). I certainly don't need a smart door, but a smart key would be great (one key for you car, house, garage, desk at work etc...), unless you lose it, then you'd need a backup.
Come to think of it, I can't think of many things that wouldn't be better if it were "enhanced", but those few things definately DON'T need to be enhanced.
-- The Dopester "Yes, I'm a Karma Whore, but I'm doing it to pay my way through school."
Re:A bit much?
by
tswinzig
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Am I the only person here who things not everything needs to be 'networked' or 'smart' or 'e-' or '-net' or anything else? For god's sake, leave some things simple!
Why is it when an advance is made in some unconventional area, there are always those people that assume EVERYTHING in that area is going to change, and they will be forced to change along with it?
Just because there are 'smart clothes' doesn't mean you have to fucking buy them!
--
"And like that... he's gone."
Re:A bit much?
by
Erasei
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
In another of Stephenson's books "Snow Crash" they had similar clothes. The chick in that book could turn on or off her brightly colored clothes. The mafia guys could turn off and on their bright yellow MAFIA (i think it was mafia) logos on their jackets.
I have been following this idea since reading that book over a year ago. zzz.com.ru runs odd stories about various things, including a few on LED fabrics in the past.
This could be really cool, IMHO.
-- visit my free wallpaper collection, wp.erasei.com
" He also suggested wearables could help Alzheimer's sufferers cope with their disease.
"I'm sorry Dave, I can't let you wander around in the forest."
Seriously, What are the privacy implcations? Is this yet another opportunity for the government? What about weaving this technology into all clothing without the person knowing about it? Will we have to do RF emissions checks when we go to buy a hat?
What about when it gets to the point where a computer could be tattooed into your skin?
I know this is all a long way off, but does anyone remember that episode of The Outer Limits where they all had the direct link into the Internet that they "wore" at all times? (I think it was supposed to be some sort of implant, but technology like this could bring us one step closer.)
-- I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
General Protection Fault
Your MS Pants Have Failed
PLEASE REMOVE AND REBOOT!
This looks like pretty 1337 stuff
by
Chakat
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
All I want to know is when I can get my color-changing shirt. Wearable computers may be cool, but I want to be able to pull on a chameleon shirt at the beginning of the day, and have it able to change colors at a whim. Even better, set it up to loop through a color changing routine. I'd love to be able to have my shirt create a color pattern based upon my mood.
This tech may be mediocre for fully immersive computing, but it would kick ass for personal style. Of course, the fashion industry would probably hate it for the same reason; the "new color" would simply mean having to put in a new color scheme, not buying hundreds, maybe thousands of dolars worth of clothes. OTOH, the industry would probably do like they do anyways, and simply change the cuts ever so slightly. Any way you look at it though, this stuff is cool, if you have a slight immunity to fashion
--
If god had intended you to be naked, you would have been born that way.
Real insight in this quote
by
fobbman
·
· Score: 3, Funny
"What we are finding is the textile researchers and the computer architects don't even know each other"
No kidding. One of the guys (at least I think it's a guy) in the server room has been cycling through the same three sweat suits since I've worked here.
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.
Sounded like an extremely cool presentation...
Wearable screen saver
by
ch-chuck
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
The company has also prototyped light-emitting fabrics based on a four-layer organic light-emitting diode that can scroll dot-matrix-style characters in the manner of the Times Square news display. It expects to advance that work to a full 400 x 500-pixel fabric-based display in two years.
Implications for the fashion industry are astounding. Something that changes Chameleon-like to resemble it's surroundings is a bit far fetched but a jacket with revolving, swirling colors and moving programmable paisly patterns will definitely be in vogue, someday. You just download the latest trend and there you are.
Heard about this-
by
purduephotog
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
One of the other advantages was the embedding of microphones in the 'vest'. These could 'listen' to the bullet as it traveled thru the body and 'hear' what it hit- all this was transmitted back. I don't remember if it was demo'd with constrictors or not (or if they were talking about the use) in order to stop blood flow towards appendages...
level of supportability
by
perdida
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Unless there are gonna be self regenerating clothes that draw solar power, I would think that it's not a good idea to buy clothes that are going to require expensive repair and maintenance. Or, to create a social or economic environment where such clothes were required.
What's wrong with simple, renewable fiber clothes, which can be produced relatively cheaply and even without much damage in the environment?Of course some textile production methods are incredibly damaging and should be stopped.
smart fabrics...
by
ldopa1
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I just posted as a reply to another poster, but this thought seems completely unrelated to what I was saying there, so here's another one.
Science Fiction novels have latched on to this idea vigorously. One of the best ideas would be smart armor for soldiers (even civilians...). When the fabric is struck by enough kinetic force, the fabric goes rigid, dispersing the force across a larger area. Bullet-proof vests made out of this kind of material could prevent even MINOR injury from relatively large sidearms.
From a civilian application, you would be able to buy ballistic protective shirts, pants, jackets etc that look fashionable, but protect you from the jerks with knives and.38's that want to take your money.
It would be an interesting social exercise. If you outfitted every civilian in a city with clothing that completely protected the wearer from knives and small arms (handheld firearms), would crime dissapear? What would a mugger use to compel someone to give over their wallet? Gas? Sprays? Biologicals?
Would the criminal of the future wield a Windex sprayer full of some mysterious liquid and say "Gimme your wallet, or I'll give you the Black Plague!" Basically, what I'm asking is do you think that crime would escalate or give up?
I realize that people say "If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns." (which, by they way, I think is a stupid statement. Of course only outlaws would have guns. They're outlaws because they have guns. Duh!), but what if the guns were rendered useless? Even new guns?
-- The Dopester "Yes, I'm a Karma Whore, but I'm doing it to pay my way through school."
Cool error messages...
by
Whip-hero
·
· Score: 3, Funny
cannot ping zipper: zipper down
-- --WH--
We'll finally be able to...
by
Bonker
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Really download pr0n straight to our underpants! Yay!
Seriously, I can think of all kinds of uses for smart fabrics. The first that comes to mind is clothing for 'Medic Alert' people. Instead of scrambling for the 'Help, I've fallen and I can't get up button', their clothing notifies the nearest ambulance station that grandpa is laying down, and it doesn't think he's taking a nap.
Also great for concerned parents. A lot of missing child cases could be solved before they became missing/abused/homicide cases if you could ping your child's clothing.
-- The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
We're computer programmers, we do the same thing we've always done.
We apply a patch:) **ducks**
-- -Denor
Obligatory comment
by
r_j_prahad
·
· Score: 4, Funny
If fashion designers start making clothes out of this stuff, then my wife **WILL** have a Beowulf cluster of them, no doubt about it.
interesting related thing
by
WillWare
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Four or five years ago, some folks at MIT were
looking at similar things. They had a DARPA grant
to figure out how to program sloppily-networked
unreliable processors, and came up with a field
they called
amorphous computing.
They used an interesting set of conservative assumptions, so that their code could run on a wide range of hopefully-soon-to-be-cheap hardware:
Processors are too numerous to merit individual names. Any interaction between programmer and processors is a bulk operation; processors are never individually addressed. Think broadcast architecture.
Processors are unreliable. Any individual processor may fail at any time, or may be broken already at power-up.
No assumption of reliable geometry: processors have no a-priori knowledge of their physical location in the cloud.
Weak assumptions about connectivity: each processor is connected to N close neighbors, where the probability distribution of N is approximately known. Connections are unreliable and may be time-varying.
All processors are assumed to be manufactured with the same program in ROM. (This doesn't preclude the possibility of a distributed boot loader.)
Remarkably, many of these hardships can be overcome by clever programming, and some kinds of algorithms turn out to be idiomatic in this kind of programming model. Interesting stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
Am I the only person here who things not everything needs to be 'networked' or 'smart' or 'e-' or '-net' or anything else? For god's sake, leave some things simple!
Now if we can just get a smart bra. . .
I think I'll stop here.
Especially when they use a new bio-terror weapon called "Smart Moth".
BTW, could Windows be considered Chlorine bleach?
(I'll be dragged down with you by the mods for those.)
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
" He also suggested wearables could help Alzheimer's sufferers cope with their disease.
"I'm sorry Dave, I can't let you wander around in the forest."
Seriously, What are the privacy implcations? Is this yet another opportunity for the government? What about weaving this technology into all clothing without the person knowing about it? Will we have to do RF emissions checks when we go to buy a hat?
What about when it gets to the point where a computer could be tattooed into your skin?
I know this is all a long way off, but does anyone remember that episode of The Outer Limits where they all had the direct link into the Internet that they "wore" at all times? (I think it was supposed to be some sort of implant, but technology like this could bring us one step closer.)
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Why would I want my jacket itself to be a computer, when I could currently have just as much computing power embedded in one of the jacket's buttons?
General Protection Fault
Your MS Pants Have Failed
PLEASE REMOVE AND REBOOT!
This tech may be mediocre for fully immersive computing, but it would kick ass for personal style. Of course, the fashion industry would probably hate it for the same reason; the "new color" would simply mean having to put in a new color scheme, not buying hundreds, maybe thousands of dolars worth of clothes. OTOH, the industry would probably do like they do anyways, and simply change the cuts ever so slightly. Any way you look at it though, this stuff is cool, if you have a slight immunity to fashion
If god had intended you to be naked, you would have been born that way.
"What we are finding is the textile researchers and the computer architects don't even know each other"
No kidding. One of the guys (at least I think it's a guy) in the server room has been cycling through the same three sweat suits since I've worked here.
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...
The company has also prototyped light-emitting fabrics based on a four-layer organic light-emitting diode that can scroll dot-matrix-style characters in the manner of the Times Square news display. It expects to advance that work to a full 400 x 500-pixel fabric-based display in two years.
Implications for the fashion industry are astounding. Something that changes Chameleon-like to resemble it's surroundings is a bit far fetched but a jacket with revolving, swirling colors and moving programmable paisly patterns will definitely be in vogue, someday. You just download the latest trend and there you are.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
One of the other advantages was the embedding of microphones in the 'vest'. These could 'listen' to the bullet as it traveled thru the body and 'hear' what it hit- all this was transmitted back. I don't remember if it was demo'd with constrictors or not (or if they were talking about the use) in order to stop blood flow towards appendages...
Unless there are gonna be self regenerating clothes that draw solar power, I would think that it's not a good idea to buy clothes that are going to require expensive repair and maintenance. Or, to create a social or economic environment where such clothes were required.
What's wrong with simple, renewable fiber clothes, which can be produced relatively cheaply and even without much damage in the environment?Of course some textile production methods are incredibly damaging and should be stopped.
Goat sex free since 2001
I just posted as a reply to another poster, but this thought seems completely unrelated to what I was saying there, so here's another one.
.38's that want to take your money.
Science Fiction novels have latched on to this idea vigorously. One of the best ideas would be smart armor for soldiers (even civilians...). When the fabric is struck by enough kinetic force, the fabric goes rigid, dispersing the force across a larger area. Bullet-proof vests made out of this kind of material could prevent even MINOR injury from relatively large sidearms.
From a civilian application, you would be able to buy ballistic protective shirts, pants, jackets etc that look fashionable, but protect you from the jerks with knives and
It would be an interesting social exercise. If you outfitted every civilian in a city with clothing that completely protected the wearer from knives and small arms (handheld firearms), would crime dissapear? What would a mugger use to compel someone to give over their wallet? Gas? Sprays? Biologicals?
Would the criminal of the future wield a Windex sprayer full of some mysterious liquid and say "Gimme your wallet, or I'll give you the Black Plague!" Basically, what I'm asking is do you think that crime would escalate or give up?
I realize that people say "If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns." (which, by they way, I think is a stupid statement. Of course only outlaws would have guns. They're outlaws because they have guns. Duh!), but what if the guns were rendered useless? Even new guns?
The Dopester
"Yes, I'm a Karma Whore, but I'm doing it to pay my way through school."
cannot ping zipper: zipper down
--WH--
Really download pr0n straight to our underpants! Yay!
Seriously, I can think of all kinds of uses for smart fabrics. The first that comes to mind is clothing for 'Medic Alert' people. Instead of scrambling for the 'Help, I've fallen and I can't get up button', their clothing notifies the nearest ambulance station that grandpa is laying down, and it doesn't think he's taking a nap.
Also great for concerned parents. A lot of missing child cases could be solved before they became missing/abused/homicide cases if you could ping your child's clothing.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
We're computer programmers, we do the same thing we've always done.
We apply a patch
-Denor
If fashion designers start making clothes out of this stuff, then my wife **WILL** have a Beowulf cluster of them, no doubt about it.
- Processors are too numerous to merit individual names. Any interaction between programmer and processors is a bulk operation; processors are never individually addressed. Think broadcast architecture.
- Processors are unreliable. Any individual processor may fail at any time, or may be broken already at power-up.
- No assumption of reliable geometry: processors have no a-priori knowledge of their physical location in the cloud.
- Weak assumptions about connectivity: each processor is connected to N close neighbors, where the probability distribution of N is approximately known. Connections are unreliable and may be time-varying.
- All processors are assumed to be manufactured with the same program in ROM. (This doesn't preclude the possibility of a distributed boot loader.)
Remarkably, many of these hardships can be overcome by clever programming, and some kinds of algorithms turn out to be idiomatic in this kind of programming model. Interesting stuff.WWJD for a Klondike Bar?