INTELLIGENT WEARABLE SYSTEMS ACHIEVEMENTS, CHALLENGES AND PERSPECTIVES

Intelligent wearable personal systems enabling, e.g. health monitoring, protection & safety and healthy lifestyle, gained strong interest during the last 10-15 years. New generation of body sensors benefit largely from significant technological advances in terms of intelligence, speed miniaturization, power autonomy and new materials at lower cost. The symbiosis of textiles with wearable computing, augmented reality, human machine interfaces, media and interface design and the collaboration between established electronics and textile industries are leading to a totally new class of large-area, flexible, conformable informative and interactive wearable systems. Further research across disciplines like micro-nano technologies, materials, physiology/biology/medicine and information & communication technologies is necessary in order to achieve highly performing, user-friendly and cost-effective wearable systems. This article presents the state-of-the-art of smart wearable integrated systems for personal applications, outlines current research achievements and discusses trends and challenges for technology, systems and applications.