During the last ten years thetraditional textile industry, that during the decades has favoured quality, haschanged its strategy to support the innovation and the creation of new productsand functionalities. This inversion of situation has allowed the consolidationof the emergence of two areas:"Technical Textiles" and "SmartTextiles and Interactive Fabrics (SFIT)".

The present document aims to relatethe several major advances and related products which appear with theblossoming of intelligent textiles.

I. Introduction

Intelligent textiles represent thenext generation of fibres, fabrics and articles produced from them. They can bedescribed as textile materials that think for themselves, for example throughthe incorporation of electronic devices or smart materials. Many intelligenttextiles already feature in advanced types of clothing, principally for protectionand safety and for added fashion or convenience.

One of the main reasons for therapid development of intelligent textiles is the important investment make bythe military industry. This is because they are used in different projects suchas extreme winter condition jackets or uniforms that change colour so as toimprove camouflage effects. Nowadays, the military industry has become aware ofthe advantage of sharing knowledge with the various industrial sectors, becausewith joint collaboration far better results can be obtained through team-work.

Intelligent textiles provide ampleevidence of the potential and enormous wealth of opportunities still to berealised in the textile industry in the fashion and clothing sector, as well asin the technical textiles sector. Moreover, these developments will be theresult of active collaboration between people from a whole variety ofbackgrounds and disciplines: engineering, science, design, process development,and business and marketing. Our very day-to-day lives will, within the next fewyears, be significantly regulated by intelligent devices and many of thesedevices will be in textiles and clothing.

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Originally published in New Cloth Market; June 2009