Programmable Fibers for Textiles

Realization of a fabric with the ability to store and process data digitally ... 

Engineers Create a Programmable Fiber

MIT News, Becky Ham, June 3, 2021

The first programmable digital fiber has been designed by engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Harrisburg University of Science and Technology, and the Rhode Island School of Design. The researchers deposited silicon microscale digital chips into a preform that was used to fabricate a polymer fiber, which could support continuous electrical connection between the chips across tens of meters. The fiber also incorporates a neural network of 1,650 links within its memory. When sewed into a shirt, the fiber collected 270 minutes of surface body temperature data from the wearer, and when trained on this data could determine the wearer's current activity with 96% accuracy. MIT's Yoel Fink said, "This work presents the first realization of a fabric with the ability to store and process data digitally, adding a new information content dimension to textiles and allowing fabrics to be programmed literally."

Artificial Muscles

Intelligence for machines, but also superior strength?

Artificial “muscles” achieve powerful pulling force
New MIT system of contracting fibers could be a boon for biomedical devices and robotics.

David L. Chandler | MIT News Office

As a cucumber plant grows, it sprouts tightly coiled tendrils that seek out supports in order to pull the plant upward. This ensures the plant receives as much sunlight exposure as possible. Now, researchers at MIT have found a way to imitate this coiling-and-pulling mechanism to produce contracting fibers that could be used as artificial muscles for robots, prosthetic limbs, or other mechanical and biomedical applications.

While many different approaches have been used for creating artificial muscles, including hydraulic systems, servo motors, shape-memory metals, and polymers that respond to stimuli, they all have limitations, including high weight or slow response times. The new fiber-based system, by contrast, is extremely lightweight and can respond very quickly, the researchers say. The findings are being reported today in the journal Science.

The new fibers were developed by MIT postdoc Mehmet Kanik and MIT graduate student Sirma Örgüç, working with professors Polina Anikeeva, Yoel Fink, Anantha Chandrakasan, and C. Cem Taşan, and five others, using a fiber-drawing technique to combine two dissimilar polymers into a single strand of fiber.

The key to the process is mating together two materials that have very different thermal expansion coefficients — meaning they have different rates of expansion when they are heated. This is the same principle used in many thermostats, for example, using a bimetallic strip as a way of measuring temperature. As the joined material heats up, the side that wants to expand faster is held back by the other material. As a result, the bonded material curls up, bending toward the side that is expanding more slowly.  ....  " ... '

Google Fiber Pauses

Many think they have stopped this moonshot, and they say that in their official blog in a rather round about way.  Was harder than they thought.  In the Google Fiber Blog.

Fiber in the Home and Enterprise

Fiber is coming into the enterprise, the neighborhood, and even into the home here.  Getting up to speed on the claims being made and the underlying technology. Video.   Discovered this piece from SiliconAngle:

" .... According to Coates, “The last mile hasn’t made it to consumers yet, so we are helping to build the scalability on networks that consumers want.” Zayo Group is an IP network and Ethernet provider, serving up layer 2 fiber and infrastructure services to the enterprise. As technology advances, the old infrastructure is able to scale and support the growth and bandwidth. Coates believes the partnership with Console, Inc. is a great opportunity for business to access Zayo Group’s network in a more simplified way through software. He also stated, “Public IP has limitations and is not scalable to the level as something you own would be, and it is not as secure.” He said that Console will help take the risk from the enterprise and move them to better connectivity. ... " 

High Speed Fiber Optics

They are starting to dig up our neighborhood to install high speed fiber optics.  Talked to an installer working on the infrastructure.  Have recently been asked to write something on the implications of higher speed connections for smart home IOT applications. So this is useful. Any thoughts or pointers in this?   Want to collaborate on a study?  Meanwhile, uneasiness happening on the stock market with technical glitches.   Implications for IOT?

Electroceuticals

In IEEE Spectrum: And once drugs have been changed to implants, there is no reason we can't also gather data with sensors at the same time.   At first I thought this was about pharma dosing, but the idea is more radical than that: " ... vision involves more than simply taking medical devices like heart pacemakers—which use electric waveforms to activate or block bundles of nerve cells—to the next level, claims Kristoffer Famm, head of bioelectronics research at GSK. The company is aiming for something much more radical: connecting thousands of tightly packed individual nerve cells with electrodes and associated circuitry to read and interpret the “code” in the collection of nerve-cell fibers that constitute a nerve, and then modulating the code to restore a specific function to a healthy state. “No treatments like this even remotely exist today,” says Famm. “The medicine will speak the body’s language.” .... :

Large Interactive Public Displays

In IEEE Computer:   An area we looked at for retail presence.  We worked with several companies that used novel light fiber approaches and installed them high on the walls of our retail lab.  The impact could be considerable.  Lower down, on shelf systems could be used to conduct directly the flow of shoppers with messages.  This article is about public displays, but has broader application.  See also the book by 5th-Screen's Keith Kelsen for key insights about display.   Much more on digital signage here.