Wearable E-Textile technologies: a review on sensors, actuators and control elements

Wearable e-textiles are able to perform electronic functions and are perceived as a way to add features into common wearable textiles, building competitive market advantages. The e-textile production has become not only a research effort but also an industrial production challenge. It is important to know how to use existing industrial processes or to develop new ones that are able to scale up production, ensuring the behavior and performance of prototypes. Despite the technical challenges, there are already some examples of wearable e-textiles where sensors, actuators, and production techniques were used to seamlessly embed electronic features into traditional wearable textiles, which allow for daily use without a bionic stigma.The authors would like to acknowledge the support from CeNTI - Centre for Nanotechnology and Smart Materials, MIT MVL - Man Vehicle Laboratory, and UMN WTL - Wearable Technology Laboratory. This work is funded by is funded by National Funds throught FCT - Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, Reference UID/CTM/50025/2013 and Ph.D. grant SFRH/BD/52352/2013 (CG), MIT Portugal Program, and FEDER funds through the COMPETE 2020 Programme under the project number POCI-01-0145-FEDER007688.