Smart clothing: detonating the new development of smart wear in 2016

"The male god" Atango, with his fascinating martial arts and handsome, harvested the box office in "Mission Impossible 5". And the film is also very interesting, and there are a series of "black and cool" technology, whether it is 3D face fast printing, paper book second computer display, or gait recognition The palm print presses the window to unlock, etc., all of which make people's brains open and stunned. Among them, especially the smart diving suit of Atango is the coolest.

How to make clothing "smart"?

This soup suit from Atango not only has its own oxygen-filling function, but also monitors the oxygen content in the human body in real time. It can also be synchronized with the computer to indicate the degree of oxygen filling to confirm the wearer's time under the water and to ensure safety. . Based on this "super power", it has become very important in the act of the female host to rescue the body of Atango. In the play, I grabbed the limelight, and the outside of the show was also eye-catching. People wanted to put it in the bag for a second, so "Mom no longer has to worry that my swimming will be deprived of oxygen."

So, today we are coming to see smart clothes. The so-called smart clothing usually refers to clothing with dual functions of perception and reaction; it can not only perceive changes in the external environment or internal state, but also respond to such changes in real time through feedback mechanisms. This has been perfectly interpreted in the diving suit of Atango.

So how does this garment achieve "intelligence"? At present, there are mainly two ways: one is to use smart clothing materials, including shape memory materials, phase change materials, color changing materials and stimuli - reaction hydrogels; the other is to use sensing technology, microelectronics technology and Information technology is introduced into everyday wear, including the use of conductive materials, flexible sensors, low-power chip technology, low-power wireless communication technology, and power supplies. For example, the smart clothes "Karma Chameleon" developed by Joanna Berzowska, a professor at the University of Concordia in Canada, can collect energy from the human body and store it, and then use this energy to change its visual properties according to the movement. The fabric used incorporates electronics and computational functional components directly into the fiber rather than simply attaching to the fabric surface. Fibrous tissue consists of a multi-layered polymer material that interacts with each other whether it is shrinking or extending.

At the same time, the development of intelligent textile technology after more than ten years of research has also added the source of power for the emergence and popularization of various forms of intelligent clothing. For example, a flexible sensor technology made of smart textile material is used to implant a carbon-based conductive material onto an elastic fabric substrate, which can generate electrical signal changes as the fabric is stretched, rebounded, etc., combined with a unique algorithm for electricity. The signal is analyzed and processed to realize the sensing function. This kind of conductive soft fabric looks like the ordinary fabric, can be washed, dried, and dried, so that it can be easily made into a variety of smart clothing. At present, the team that developed this technology has developed a smart underwear that can record the physiological changes of males, the duration of natural impulses, the number of times, etc. in real time according to the changes of male “golden parts”; Bra, wear it to monitor women's exercise, breathing, heart rate, emotional condition; there is also a smart belt to pay attention to people with weight loss, wear it, you can monitor your waist circumference changes every day, the system will remind you to pay attention to control diet Strengthen sports.

What is the market space for smart clothing?

Then, what kind of market space does the smart clothing field have, what kind of business opportunities and challenges are there?

In fact, in the field of smart wear, the emergence and development of smart clothing is no longer a sci-fi rarity. Since the advent of the wearable multimedia computer of the MIT Media Lab in the 1990s, domestic and foreign scholars have begun to pay attention to the research of wearable technology and smart clothing. Before 1997, at the beginning of the development of smart clothing, smart clothing at that time did not have good wearability, only the carrier of the realization of scientific value; then, around 2000, people began to realize the integration of fashion and smart materials. The importance of smart clothing design, but the progress of research and development is relatively slow, so that the focus on smart wear is more projected on the wearables with smart bracelets, smart watches and smart glasses as the carrier. The degree is relatively weak.

However, the huge market capacity of the apparel industry still leaves the potential and space for the Jedi counterattack of smart clothing. Especially in recent years, the sales volume of China's clothing market is increasing year by year. According to statistics, in 2009-2011, the retail sales of China's apparel market increased from 900 billion yuan to 1,344.6 billion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of 22.25%. In 2012, due to the European debt crisis and the downward trend of the domestic macroeconomic situation, the growth rate slowed down. , only a year-on-year increase of 7.83%. It is expected that in the next few years, with the gradual improvement of the domestic and international economic situation, the growth rate of retail sales in China's apparel market will rebound, reaching 10%-15%.

The healthy development of the clothing market, coupled with the trend of smart technology, the combination of the two will undoubtedly make the prospect of "smart clothing" become "unlimited." Even if the price of smart clothing is higher than that of a general-purpose clothing, it does not affect its market potential. What's more, China is rapidly moving towards high-end luxury consumer countries, and its interest in fresh gadgets is naturally strong. Then, smart clothing with appropriate functions and stylish elements, why not fear the market!

2016 will usher in the explosion of smart clothing industry

Along with technology giants such as Google, they once again turned their attention to smart clothing, and coincided with the cool support of the Atango diving suits. Smart clothing has attracted the attention of the industry and the consumer market. It is not difficult to imagine that in the next 2016, the development and sales of smart clothing will enter a new development fast lane, and its light will also overshadow smart wear, smart glasses and other wearables, becoming a new round of development climax in the field of smart wear. Representative of. As predicted by Gartner's report, smart apparel will jump from a frozen state of nearly zero in 2013 and 2014 to an estimated 26 million in 2016, making it one of the largest shipments in the smart wear sector. .

In this respect, products such as smart watches, smart bracelets and smart glasses have undergone pre-development. If a breakthrough cannot be made in the industrial chain technology in a short period of time, the product technology and form performance will be restricted, resulting in a certain product. The level enters “homogeneity”. Therefore, as a carrier of smart bracelets and other devices, to promote the wearable device to continue to move forward, smart clothing will undoubtedly be the best choice. This also means that with the rise of smart clothing, the wearable device industry is about to usher in a new round of development.

On the other hand, the market capacity of clothing is huge, and the brand's market operation experience and distribution channels are relatively mature. Compared with those hardware manufacturers who have built new products from scratch, whether they are spreading or infiltrating. It is much bigger.

Furthermore, it has something to do with the attributes of the product. Apparel is not only a necessary part of the human body, but also more closely connected with the human body. For the functional realization of the wearable device, the human body data collected by the device is supplemented by a targeted algorithm, which is undoubtedly better than the current wristband, watch and other equipment. More accurate. This will improve the user experience of wearable devices to a certain extent, and will play a positive role in the promotion and development of wearable devices.