Emerging AI Technologies Inspiring the Next Generation of E-Textiles

The smart textile and wearables sector is looking towards advancing technologies to meet both industry, consumer and new emerging innovative textile application demands, within a fast paced textile industry. In parallel, inspiration based on the biological neural workings of the human brain is driving the next generation of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI inspired hardware (neuromorphic computing) and software modules mimicking the processing capabilities and properties of neural networks and the human nervous system are taking shape. The textile sector needs to actively look at such emerging and new technologies, taking inspiration from their workings and processing methods in order to stimulate new and innovative embedded intelligence advancements in the e-textile world. This emerging next generation of AI is rapidly gaining interest across varying industries (textile, medical, automotive, aerospace, military). It brings the promise of new innovative applications enabled by low size, weight and processing power technologies. Such properties meet the need for enhanced performing integrated circuits (IC’s) and complex machine learning algorithms. How such properties can inspire and drive advancements within the e-textiles sector needs to be considered. This paper will provide an insight into AI advancements in the e-textiles domain, before focusing specifically on the future vision and direction around the potential application of neuromorphic computing and spiking neural network inspired AI technologies within the textile sector. We investigate the core architectural elements of artificial neural networks, neuromorphic computing (2D and 3D structures) and how such neuroscience inspired technologies could impact and inspire change and new research developments within the e-textile sector.