This New Fabric Can ‘Hear’ Your Heartbeat
Imagine being at home when you suddenly get a phone call through your clothing. You pick up the phone and talk to the person on the other end. Do you think it’s crazy? Because as per research by engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and their collaborators at the Rhode Island School of Design, this scenario may become a reality soon. Researchers have developed a fabric that can detect sounds both outside and within your body. Their findings were published in the journal Nature.
According to the report published in Nature, the fabric of the T-shirt is made from the fibre of Piezoelectric material, the speciality of which is that as soon as the fabric is twisted, it creates an electric signal. This helps the fabric to convert the electric signal into sound. Scientists got this idea from the human eardrum, which is made of fibre. The study’s lead author, Wei Yan, has said that this fabric also detects the heartbeat of the wearer, irrespective of whether he or she is in a state of rest or restlessness.
“Wearing an acoustic garment, you might talk through it to answer phone calls and communicate with others,” said lead author Wei Yan, who is now a professor at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, in a statement.
He added, “In addition, this fabric can imperceptibly interface with the human skin, enabling wearers to monitor their heart and respiratory condition in a comfortable, continuous, real-time and long-term manner.”
The price of this T-shirt has not been decided yet. According to Wei Yan, the fabric, used in the T-shirt, can interface with the human skin. It will act as a microphone in the human body. The fabric can detect sounds in a wide range of decibels, from a calm library to noisy traffic, as well as the precise direction of abrupt sounds like handclaps. The fabric can detect a wearer’s modest heartbeat features when sewn into the lining of a shirt. The fibres can also be made to produce sound, such as a recording of spoken words, which can be detected by another fabric. It can also amplify sounds, which could help those who are hard of hearing. This solution could also be used to help detect cracks in buildings or be woven into a net to monitor fish, the researchers say in the statement.
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