‘Smart shirt’ with health monitoring sensors in development

A team in Germany is developing a prototype smart shirt equipped with sensors that monitor movement.

Produced by researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research ISC in Wurzburg, the MONI shirt contains a transparent material printed with a piezoelectric polymer sensor paste, which registers pressure and deformation.

This allows the flexible, non-toxic material to detect touch, motion and changes in temperature. The paste is deposited on to the fabric or surface using a simple screen printing process, making the shirts easy to manufacture and potentially mass-produce.

The transparent nature of the paste means it can be used in a wide range of fabrics of different colours, while the sensors are also able to harvest energy from the movement of the wearer, meaning an external power source is not needed.

Such shirts could help monitor hospital patients' vital signs or detect when an elderly person has suffered a fall.

Dr Gerhard Domann, head of the competence unit for optics and electronics at Fraunhofer ISC, said: "The sensors have some unique properties such as the freedom of design, and the possibility to produce sensor arrays over a large surface."