What will the clothes of the future look like? Everything about metamaterials and smart clothes

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

What if in the future even our clothes, along with sports and proper nutrition, can prolong our life and make us healthier? Below we will tell you about the smart clothing industry, where it is heading, what its benefits are for each of us, and what awaits us in the future.

You will be surprised, but bracelets, watches and smartphones that track steps for the day are only a small part of what awaits us in the future. Just a glimpse of the smart apparel and metamaterials industry makes our hair stand on end in anticipation of what will soon be available to all of us.

Imagine that in 10 years your t-shirt, bra, or socks will be smarter than today's smartphones and smartwatches. Impressive? Yes. And at the same time it gets a little scary.

Metamaterials

Metamaterials are materials that are created artificially and do not occur in nature. Their name is due to the fact that they have special properties that are not found in conventional tissues.

Most often, metamaterials have unusual acoustic, electromagnetic, or optical properties. Remember the invisibility cloak from Harry Potter? If such a cloak appears, then it will consist of metamaterials. Moreover, attempts to create clothes that make its owner invisible have been undertaken for a long time, and humanity has even achieved some success in this.

For example, researcher Andrea de Falco was able to create a metaflex - a material that, due to the refraction of light, makes an object wrapped in it invisible and almost invisible. But we are more interested in the use of metamaterials in sports, because this is where our body works at its limit and it is very important to receive maximum information about its state.

Columbia's Omni-Heat technology, in part, is making sure metamaterials are the future of clothing. The Omni-Heat concept is based on a special material with the addition of aluminum. It does not let out the heat that is released by the body and returns it back to the owner.

Surprisingly, this technology really works. I have a jacket and thermal underwear with Omni-Heat, and the fact that my jacket weighs five times less than a down jacket, and warms the same, if not better, still surprises me. But Columbia's technology is just the beginning.

Smart clothes

If metamaterials will not be available to ordinary people soon, then smart clothes are available right now. For example,. It includes a variety of wardrobe items, from T-shirts to bras. They have a built-in heart rate sensor that reads your heartbeat and then syncs with one of the gadgets to store statistics.

The clothing is made almost entirely of polyester and uses a few unusual technologies. The most interesting of them is Techfit. But Adidas itself calls it TECHFIT! It allows you to make a person 5% stronger. How? With the help of the laws of physics. The stiffer material achieves stronger compression, while the stretchable elements act like a spring to help you move. That is, if you lowered the barbell to your chest, not only you, but also your T-shirt will squeeze it.

And the second Adidas technology that is already in use is Climacool. It promotes air circulation and sweat removal. Due to the "breathable" materials, sweat is absorbed into the garment and then transported to the surface of the fabric for evaporation. The company implements this technology in those garments that come into contact with the sweatiest areas of our body, that is, in

The pinnacle of the smart apparel industry was presented at CES 2015. They are equipped with a special sensor that reads heart rate, activity level, sleep efficiency, breathing rate, movement speed and, of course, the number of calories burned.

While this is all that we can buy and touch right now. What's next for us? I can only guess. For example, interactive elements on clothing that allow you to enable or disable any functions. Or a special fiber that monitors tears in clothing and, based on them, can provide information about injuries to the body. You don't even need to talk about weather, humidity and pressure sensors.

Smart clothes are our future. We are looking for ways to extend our life without thinking that our clothes can become the main tool for this.