System-on-Cloth- A Cloud Manufacturing Framework for Embroidered Wearable Electronics

Wearable electronics are widely used in health monitoring and wearable computing. The needs for comfort, biocompatibility, and operability call for special attention to new generation technologies. The recent progress in smart fabrics, textiles, and garments and their manufacturing techniques has opened the door for next-generation wearable electronics with fully flexible systems on cloth. Automatic embroidery manufacturing is now an accessible tool for individuals and small entrepreneurs. Embroidery offers great potential for electronic design due to its flexibility of transferring desired pattern to fabric substrates. This project aims to establish a cloud manufacturing (CMfg) framework that integrates electronics, design-to-manufacturing translation, and CMfg for embroidered wearable electronics that will be open to customers, manufacturers, design experts, and developers. The ultimate goal is that everyone can design their own desired wearable devices on cloth through the new cybermanufacturing systems. In addition, this project also aims to broaden participation from K-12, undergraduate, and graduate students, to provide rich multidisciplinary classroom and non-classroom experiences for all levels of students, and to inspire student interest in a STEM career.

The research goal of this CAREER project is to establish a cloud manufacturing framework for embroidered wearable electronics as an accessible platform technology towards System-on-Cloth (SoCl). Three tasks are proposed to achieve the goal: 1) to understand physical variations of conductive threads and flexible electronics by physical modeling and experimental testing for embroidered electronics; 2) to create Electronic Design Automation (EDA) software that will realize design-to-manufacturing translation from schematics by integrating new Electrical Rule Checking (ERC) and Design Rule Checking (DRC) criteria, optimal stitch generation, and an open library of wearable electronics; and 3) to explore a cloud manufacturing framework with open architecture, open source code, and friendly user-interfaces that will be easily used by customers, manufacturers, software developers, as well as electronic design experts. The proposed CMfg framework with the cloud-based EDA features high tractability, reliability, and compatibility for diverse individuals and entrepreneurs.