Author: ntueyarns

Last week members of the ATRG team attended the Future Textiles 2023 conference in Bristol (UK), which covered a range of textile related topics including electronic textiles, technical textiles, and sustainable textile manufacturing. Kalana Marasinghe (pictured above) presented a poster on the ‘Design approach to an automated electronic yarn manufacturing system‘, which is directly linked to his work designing and engineering the new automated soldering system for the ‘Production engineering research for the manufacture of novel electronically functional yarns for multifunctional smart textiles‘ project. Theo Hughes-Riley (pictured below) gave an invited talk on ‘Recent advances in the automated production of electronic yarns‘ which gave a more holistic overview of the recent developments on the project.

Dr Hughes-Riley was recently invited to speak at the 7th World Congress of Smart Materials in Sapporo (Japan). He presented on ‘Electronically Functional Yarns (E-yarns) for smart textiles’ where he detailed some of the recent develops made in the manufacturing of electronic yarns. His talk also included information about some recent E-yarn demonstrators developed by the group.

Dr Hughes-Riley recently spoke at the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) at their headquarters in Savoy Place, London. He was invited by the IET Central London Local Network to present as part of their ‘Lunch and Lecture’ series of events. His lecture, ‘Electronics embedded within textiles and clothing’ covered current work and developments in the area of electronic yarns, and the strides made towards manufacturing E-yarns at scale. The IET Lunch and Lecture events are held monthly, and details of future events are available on their website.

Members of the ATRG team recently visiting colleagues in Manchester. We were first hosted by the Northwest Composites Centre at the University of Manchester (picture above, with Dr Anura Fernando of the Unviersity of Manchester). We then visited both the Manchester School of Art and Manchester Fashion Institute at Manchester Metropolitan University (picture below, with Kate Egan and Aaron Zidichouski of Manchester Metropolitan University).

In collaboration with other colleagues at Nottingham Trent University and the University of Nottingham, the ATRG have published a new research article ‘Classifying gait alterations using an instrumented smart sock and deep learning’. The article describes the measurement of gait using two sock that incorporate a series of three E-yarns embedded with accelerometers each. Machine learning was then used to identify gait patterns linked to different movement disorders. Such a sock may prove to be useful for clinicians to monitor gait pattern alterations remotely during gait rehabilitation. The article was published in the IEEE Sensors Journal and is available here.

Members of the ATRG recently attended E-Textiles 2022 (4th International Conference on the Challenges, Opportunities, Innovations and Applications in Electronic Textiles), where the ATRG had an exhibition stand disseminating work from the project. The conference was held in Nottingham this year. Members of the ATRG team were involved in the local organising committee including Dr Arash Shahidi (pictured), Kalana Marasinghe, and Dr Theo Hughes-Riley (who was the conference chair). More details on the conference can be found on the official website.

Dr Hughes-Riley was recently in Perugia (Italy) as he was invited to speak at the 9th Forum on New Materials, which was part of CIMTEC 2022. He presented on ‘Energy harvesting and storage with electronic textiles’, with his presentation focussing on recent developments by the ATRG into the development of woven textile solar panels.

Dr Hughes-Riley recently visited the Pacific Northwest in the United States of America. During the trip he visited DXARTS and Professor Afroditi Psarra at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he had the opportunity to present the work of the ATRG to the E-textiles and Wearables class.

Dr Hughes-Riley also visited Adidas in Portland (Oregon). The ARTG have collaborated with Adidas in the past and this was an opportunity to share our recent research with them.

Research from the project was recently presented as part of an exhibition booth and poster presentations at the ‘3rd International Conference on the Challenges, Opportunities, Innovations and Applications in Electronic Textiles’ in Manchester, UK. Dr Arash Shahidi presented a poster entitled ‘Development of a manufacturing process for a robust electronic yarn’ which focussed on the recent developments made in enhancing the durability of the core E-yarn and the current E-yarn manufacturing process. Nour Nashed’s poster, ‘Finite element analysis of the mechanical stresses on the core structure of electronically functional yarns’, explored using finite element modelling to optimise the resin encapsulation of components in E-yarns to improve durability. The E-textile conference is hosted by the EPSRC funded E-textiles network. Now in it’s third year the conference brings academics and member of industry together to discuss challenges and opportunities in the field. More information on the conference series is available here.

The ATRG have published a new research article on the development of a vibration sensing electronic yarn. The article ‘Vibration-Sensing Electronic Yarns for the Monitoring of Hand Transmitted Vibrations’ focusses on the characterisation of the electronic yarn for a range of vibration amplitudes and frequencies that are relevant to hand transmitted vibrations at each stage of the production process; as a soldered component (accelerometer), when encapsulated, as a final yarn, and once in a fabric. The work presents a vibration sensing glove that is capable of taking vibration measurements at both the palm of the hand and on the index finger. The article was published in Sensors and is available here.