TEXTILES.ORG
Making wearable tech a reality
March 10th, 2025
This image demonstrates cap touch using conductive yarns that are knit as part of the garment. It highlights a potential integration of hard goods and electronics with soft goods and wearables. The prototype features a small circuit board attached to a section of knit fabric with conductive yarns. Photo: Priority Designs. We are in the […]
Recent advances in biomedical textiles
February 24th, 2025
In 2003 after 13 years of global collaboration, the Human Genome Project was successfully completed, providing a comprehensive blueprint of human genetic information. This has given impetus to a rapidly expanding level of research in disease diagnosis, such as cancer, personalized medical treatments, the understanding of genetic disorders, genetic engineering therapies, and applications in tissue […]
ATA’s Emerging Textiles Conference begins Sept. 23
August 26th, 2024
The 2024 Advanced Textiles Association’s Emerging Technologies (ET) Conference starts Monday, Sept. 23, with a full day dedicated to emerging technologies education and networking. The second day includes classroom education in the morning, transitioning to Advanced Textiles Expo in the afternoon with education continuing on the show floor. Among the topics to be featured in […]
ATA’s 2024 Emerging Technologies Conference at Expo
July 15th, 2024
The Advanced Textiles Association’s Emerging Technologies Conference Sept. 23-26, 2024, in Anaheim, Calif., will cover a range of topics important in today’s textile industry, and will feature three topic areas: artificial intelligence, sustainability and smart fabrics. The conference runs concurrently with ATA’s Expo at the Anaheim Convention Center. Beginning at 8:00 a.m. Sept. 23, there […]
Growth engines in advanced textiles
March 11th, 2024
Scientists at North Carolina State University have developed a soft robot, designed like a caterpillar, capable of moving forward, backward, and squeezing through tight spaces. Its movement is powered by a unique pattern of silver nanowires that use heat to regulate its bending, giving users the ability to direct the robot in any desired direction. Photo: Shuang […]
AI and textiles: it’s already here
February 26th, 2024
This image relating to digital design was generated using OpenAI’s text-to-image generative AI tool, DALL-E. Provided by Caitlin Knowles/AFFOA. Editor’s note: Two researchers with expertise in advanced technologies—and smart textiles, in particular—responded to questions about artificial intelligence and its future in the industry. Irmandy Wicaksono (IW) is a research assistant in the MIT Media Lab and […]
Taking on the wearables challenges
November 13th, 2023
AFFOA showed a newly developed material for smart products in their booth on the show floor at Advanced Textiles Expo in Orlando. It describes the material as a “flexible, roll-to-roll, inkjet manufacturable, RF metamaterial for wearables.” Photo: Janet Preus. The Emerging Technologies Conference, part of the Advanced Textiles Association’s annual Expo, revealed the diversity in […]
ATA’s Emerging Technologies Conference begins Oct. 31
July 17th, 2023
The Advanced Textiles Association (ATA) presents its Emerging Technologies Conference beginning Oct. 31 at the Orange County Convention Center, Orlando, Fla., and continuing through Nov. 2 as a part of Advanced Textiles Expo 2023. Presentations will begin at the opening lunch at 11:30 and continue throughout Expo 2023. Scheduled presentations Jeremy Husic, senior staff engineer, […]
Tomorrow’s textiles
September 12th, 2022
An example use of the fiber-based microelectronics integrated into a New Balance running shoe for safety applications and unique data transmission. Photo: AFFOA Historical branding of textiles has led the general population to think that textiles are anything but advanced. As anyone in the textile industry can appreciate, textiles are not simple or basic, but […]
When “disruptive” is a good word
February 3rd, 2022
by Janet Preus When I was a teacher, the word “disruptive” was usually attached to a student who had interrupted the flow of a lesson or class activity with inappropriate behavior. With sometimes as many as 30 or more students, all trying to accomplish the same thing at the same time, one student could indeed […]