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In May of 2022, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), the research and development arm of the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, announced a program designed to develop sensor systems that can record and store audio, video and location data. It also seeks to develop a garment that maintains stretchability, bendability, surface roughness and washability attributes that are comparable to a garment containing no sensor.
That’s a big order, but it’s also one that fits IARPA’s mission to invest in high-risk, high-payoff research programs. This has presented an exceptional opportunity for the advanced textiles industry, which has responded. Named “SMART ePANTS” (Smart Electrically Powered and Networked Textile Systems) by the program director, Dr. Dawson Cagle. In a recent interview with Dr. Cagle, he outlined progress so far, 11 months into the three-year program, which is now in Phase 1, the “Build It” phase, set to end in January 2025.
There are four teams participating, made up of more than 20 companies. “I’ve seen some amazing stuff,” Cagle says, but notes that “e-textiles development has slowed commercially, partially due to complications with power and interconnects. Textiles are also soft substrates—stretchable, bendable and washable. How do you integrate all those pieces, so they conform to our daily lives?” he asks. This has been a big part of the challenge in this far-reaching program.
Combining expertise
Early on, the project had to reconcile a more typical method of evaluation—using focus group information, for example—with a more scientific approach. “We’re a scientific research organization and like to gauge progress according to some measurable method that doesn’t depend on subjective opinions of people,” he says. “We want to see progress and measure comfort and durability.” Combining industry independent standards “and the more human piece of this” is continuing to evolve, he says.
It’s also been about assembling expertise in various types of textile production. “Teams have put together a bunch of individual technologies: weaving, knitting, embroidering. Each team has bright spots,” he says. “These skills are so disparate.”
Unique approaches among researchers have supported other aspects of development, as well. “Four different battery efforts are underway, he says. One is a flexible cell designed to go in a shirt collar under development by Anthro Energy in California. Dr. Candace Chan at Arizona State University is developing a flexible tube battery, and Dr. Wei Gao at North Carolina State University (NCSU) is working on a battery shaped like a yarn. Dr. Joe Wang, University of California San Diego, has introduced the first batteries that actually stretch.
“All of these are high-risk efforts, Cagle says. “In just one year in they’re making these things, and they work. I’m sure they will all contribute to where we want to be.”
Additionally, Cagle says, “I have two really good camera teams.” These include Centeye, a maker of compact vision systems based in Washington, D.C., and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, who are both working on miniature camera technologies.
Among the most interesting “on the microphone front,” he says, are developments led by David Blaauw at the University of Michigan, whose research has covered a variety of ultra-low power computing and sensing devices; and International Fabric Machines in Boston, which is working on microphone recording systems that fit inside a fiber. “Truly groundbreaking!” Cagle says.
The typical “wearable” that incorporates a small “puck” for power, “are all just miniaturizations of the same technologies that we’ve had since personal computers,” Cagle says. “We’re looking at reimagining the technology to make the technology fit the application.”
In a computer, there’s wiring moving from one component to another, but in a garment it’s much more complex, “especially if one of the sensors or components is in a stress point,” he says. This project is looking to make a computer that will adapt and reroute itself when components break.
Researchers at Clemson University in South Carolina are weaving pockets into textiles that have no seams. Nautilus Defense, Providence, R.I., is embroidering tiny, insulated wires onto a textile. “Nobody has done this before,” Cagle says. (See “Nautilus Defense announces e-textile breakthrough” on this site.)
Next steps
Testing on the functioning of the electronics in these newly developed materials will be done at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. AFFOA (Advanced Functional Fabrics of America) will handle testing the fabric, he says. “They are the experts who are going to talk to us about the function of the devices and how they behave, according to the metrics that IARPA sets.”
The program’s Phase II, “Wear It,” will also last one year and begin in 2025. Phase III is the “Wash It” phase, for which IARPA has set “extremely impossible metrics. Almost impossible,” he says. “We’ll see how our teams can do!”
Although the project’s initiative is to address the needs of its own community, it was never intended to stop there. “We’re hoping to give the textile community the tools to make active smart textiles,” he says.
“We really want the technology to be shared,” Cagle says. “We want the world to adopt this. No one is restricted.” However, the universities and companies involved will make that call, in the end. “It is their decision entirely,” he says. “We don’t require that the information be shared. We retain the government’s right to use it, but that’s all. We don’t hold equity. We really do want this to go out into the world. We’re de-risking it to make it possible.”
“Overall I believe that SMART ePANTS is going to make its biggest contributions on integration of various technologies on soft substrates and make them launderable,” he says. “We’re trying to take what all these different groups have done and make them work together. We think we will see these get taken up by the medical, military and sports performance markets.”
Also in the last year, Cagle has received letters from the general public showing excitement for how these new technologies could help their families. In fact, Cagle has personal reasons, referencing his parents’ health challenges. The ability to monitor conditions and improve communication could “make lives better, [which is] a major goal of the program,” he says.
Detailed information about the program is available on the program’s site: https://www.iarpa.gov/research-programs/smart-epants.
Janet Preus is senior editor of Textile Technology Source. She can be reached at janet.preus@textiles.org.