Toward Comfortable Smart Clothing: A Case of Creative Design for Health Monitoring
Year: 2016
Editor: Julie Linsey, Maria Yang, and Yukari Nagai
Author: Ding, Wei; Jader, Zelaya; Yukari, Nagai; Guo, Xiao; Liu, Jing
Series: ICDC
ISBN: 978-1-904670-82-7
Abstract
Smart clothing can be beneficial for health monitoring. However, there still exists the
challenge of designing casual smart clothing that both accurately measure health parameters and
that ensure a high level of wearing comfort. A common design for real-time body temperature
monitoring, for example, involves the use of sensors that tightly contact the skin. However, skintight
sensors are uncomfortable to the wearer and potentially hazardous. Skin-loose sensors, on
the other hand, enhance comfortability but limit the accuracy of the temperature readings. This
study presents a creative design solution that applies knowledge of clothing design, sensor
technology, and machine learning in an experiment. The results show that a combination of
multiple skin-loose sensors can be used to overcome the trade-off between sensor accuracy and
wearing comfort in smart clothing for health monitoring.
Keywords: creative design, smart clothing, health monitoring