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Imagine that your jacket "feels" the cold and automatically gets warmer.
Instead of having a coat for every season, imagine a jacket that dynamically changes its shape, becoming more insulating to keep you warm when the temperature drops.
An interdisciplinary team of researchers from MIT has developed a programmable fiber that could bring this idea to life in the future. This fiber, known as FibeRobo, contracts when the temperature rises and returns to its original state on its own when it decreases, without any built-in sensors or other rigid components.
This low-cost fiber is fully compatible with textile manufacturing techniques and can be produced continuously for kilometers. This allows designers to easily implement actuation and sensor capabilities in a wide range of fabrics for various applications.
The fibers can also be combined with a conductive filament that acts as a heating element when an electric current passes through it. In this way, the fibers are activated by electricity, giving the user digital control over the shape of the textile.
Jack Forman, a graduate student at the MIT Media Lab's Tangible Media Group, said: "We use textiles for everything. But what should be most adaptive and responsive — textiles-is completely inert."
The study will be presented at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology.
Current shape-changing fibers have drawbacks that mostly prevent their integration into textiles outside of laboratory settings. MIT researchers have created a fiber that can activate silently and change its shape, while being compatible with conventional textile manufacturing procedures. To do this, they used a material known as liquid crystal elastomer (LCE).
The result is a FibeRobo fiber that can shrink by 40% without bending, activate at skin-friendly temperatures, and cost 20 cents per meter.
MIT researchers used FibeRobo to demonstrate several applications, including an adaptive sports bodice that tightens when the wearer begins to engage in physical activity.
In the future, the researchers want to customize the chemical components of the fiber so that it can be recyclable or biodegradable.
Instead of having a coat for every season, imagine a jacket that dynamically changes its shape, becoming more insulating to keep you warm when the temperature drops.
An interdisciplinary team of researchers from MIT has developed a programmable fiber that could bring this idea to life in the future. This fiber, known as FibeRobo, contracts when the temperature rises and returns to its original state on its own when it decreases, without any built-in sensors or other rigid components.
This low-cost fiber is fully compatible with textile manufacturing techniques and can be produced continuously for kilometers. This allows designers to easily implement actuation and sensor capabilities in a wide range of fabrics for various applications.
The fibers can also be combined with a conductive filament that acts as a heating element when an electric current passes through it. In this way, the fibers are activated by electricity, giving the user digital control over the shape of the textile.
Jack Forman, a graduate student at the MIT Media Lab's Tangible Media Group, said: "We use textiles for everything. But what should be most adaptive and responsive — textiles-is completely inert."
The study will be presented at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology.
Current shape-changing fibers have drawbacks that mostly prevent their integration into textiles outside of laboratory settings. MIT researchers have created a fiber that can activate silently and change its shape, while being compatible with conventional textile manufacturing procedures. To do this, they used a material known as liquid crystal elastomer (LCE).
The result is a FibeRobo fiber that can shrink by 40% without bending, activate at skin-friendly temperatures, and cost 20 cents per meter.
MIT researchers used FibeRobo to demonstrate several applications, including an adaptive sports bodice that tightens when the wearer begins to engage in physical activity.
In the future, the researchers want to customize the chemical components of the fiber so that it can be recyclable or biodegradable.