Future running clothes will do more than just wick moisture away from your skin. They will change shape the minute you start taking a shower.
BioLogic, a new project from researchers at MIT Media Lab (in collaboration with New Balance), uses live cells to create sweat-absorbing clothing. In a submission paper Advances in science (as seen by designboom), the research team describes how they used it E. coli cells (not the strain that gives you food poisoning) to make a shirt with fins that open and close in response to moisture.
The cells are imprinted on latex fabric, and as they expand and contract in response to moisture or heat, they also change the fabric, peeling it up or letting it rest. to take.
The resulting suit is designed with flaps of bacterial material located above the parts of the upper body that provide the most heat. When you wear it, the sleeves of the shirt open up just when your body starts to warm up. In one experiment, sensors showed that the cellular shirt removed more sweat and kept the skin temperature lower than a running suit with a similar flap design. Wen Wang, one of the project leaders, said it felt like “wearing an aircraft on my back. ”
The researchers created running shoes that work using the same technique, and engineered the cells to ignite them in response to sweat – so they could make runners more visible in the dark. In the future, the responsive fabric may be able to disperse odor to comb out body odor as well.
[h/t designboom]