ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with research and product landscape. Currently, a lot of research around smart textiles is conducted worldwide. For the purpose of sensing pressure, the researchers developed a pressure sensor mat made of a spacer fabric with embroidered electro-conductive patch arrays on both sides. Within the scope of the European MyHeart project, researchers at the Wearable Computing Laboratory are working on an automatic dietary monitoring system. Despite around 10 years of research and development a few smart textile and clothing products are found on the market. In order to get a quick overview of the development stage of the different smart textiles and their evolution, five different levels of development are defined, starting from research, going to prototyping, certification, commercial introduction and finally arriving at technical maturation and wider commercial use. Some applications might be still in early development as they are tough to develop and need a lot of research to be fully understood.
