Image credit: Braiding a computer fiber with a combination of metal and textile yarns (Hamilton Osoy, IFM)
Nikhil Gupta, Henry Cheung, Syamantak Payra, Gabriel Loke, Jenny Li, Yongyi Zhao, Latika Balachander, Ella Son, Vivian Li, Samuel Kravitz, Sehar Lohawala, John Joannopoulos & Yoel Fink
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024–08568‑6
Abstract:
Despite advancements in wearable technologies1,2, barriers remain in achieving distributed computation located persistently on the human body. Here a textile fibre computer that monolithically combines analogue sensing, digital memory, processing and communication in a mass of less than 5 g is presented. Enabled by a foldable interposer, the two-dimensional pad architectures of microdevices were mapped to three-dimensional cylindrical layouts conforming to fibre geometry. Through connection with helical copper microwires, eight microdevices were thermally drawn into a machine-washable elastic fibre capable of more than 60% stretch. This programmable fibre, which incorporates a 32-bit floating-point microcontroller, independently performs edge computing tasks even when braided, woven, knitted or seam-sewn into garments. The universality of the assembly process allows for the integration of additional functions with simple modifications, including a rechargeable fibre power source that operates the computer for nearly 6 h. Finally, we surmount the perennial limitation of rigid interconnects by implementing two wireless communication schemes involving woven optical links and seam-inserted radio-frequency communications. To demonstrate its utility, we show that garments equipped with four fibre computers, one per limb, operating individually trained neural networks achieve, on average, 67% accuracy in classifying physical activity. However, when networked, inference accuracy increases to 95% using simple weighted voting.