Wearable sensors help home and car designers accommodate disability

Dan Rogers - 26 Feb 2010

Smart textile technology will be used to prepare devices, vehicles and work spaces for people with disabilities and impairments.

The European Veritas project will use simulations and virtual reality to test products and services for transport, the workplace, healthcare and entertainment. Wearable electronics will be used to analyse movement and results will inform the design of products in these areas.

The four-year, €13 million project began earlier this year. Italian smart textile developer Smartex is working on the sensing technology to improve understanding of the interaction of disabled wearers with objects and spaces.

Smartex research director Rita Paradiso explains: 'We are realising the multi-sensor platform. We're looking at the way to get information for people with disabilities and then realise the model for it.'

Reading results

The project will allow Smartex to investigate the link between the many physical markers from the body and the emotional state of the subject.

'We're investigating the correlation between physiological and emotional indicators. In this situation, how you manage the data becomes crucial - how you extrapolate on it and present it to the user as a reading,' says Paradiso.

The company will then create a system capable of understanding a disabled person's behaviour in a simulation and revise the design of a product accordingly under Veritas.

Paradiso adds: 'By looking at the physical and physiological signs from people with disabilities, a company will be able to improve a new product, like a car, motorbike or house.'

The new project is part of a growing list of R&D into smart textiles related to disability and wellbeing. The TecInTex project in Switzerland is creating smart textile underwear to monitor the movement of paraplegic patients.

And Spanish centre Cetemmsa is working on a number of smart fabric applications, including a smart plaster controlled by electronic input.

The Veritas project - its full title being 'Virtual and augmented environments and realistic user interactions to achieve embedded accessibility designs' - brings together a number of partners, including the Italy-based Centro Richerche Fiat, the Marie Curie Association in Bulgaria and German body modelling firm Human Solutions. Veritas is coordinated by the Fraunhofer Institute.