Researcher develops health-monitoring sleepwear ‘phyjamas’

Washington: Scientists predict that future garment will come with unobtrusive, portable devices for monitoring heart rate and respiratory rhythm during sleep. But for now, they have developed physiological-sensing textiles called phyjamas.
Graduate students Ali Kiaghadi and S. Zohreh Homayounfar, with their professors Trisha L. Andrew, a materials chemist, and computer scientist Deepak Ganesan, introduced their health-monitoring sleepwear at the Ubicomp 2019 conference in London, U.K.
A paper detailing the work has been chosen for publication in the Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT).
“Generally, people assume that smart textiles refer to tightly worn clothing that has various sensors embedded in it for measuring physiological and physical signals, but this is clearly not a solution for everyday clothing and, in particular, sleepwear,” explained Professors Trisha L. Andrew.
“Our insight was that even though sleepwear is worn loosely, there are several parts of such a textile that are pressed against the body due to our posture and contact with external surfaces. This includes pressure exerted by the torso against a chair or bed, pressure when the armrests on the side of the body while sleeping, and light pressure from a blanket over the sleepwear,” Ganesan added.
“Such pressured regions of the textile are potential locations where we can measure ballistic movements caused by heartbeats and breathing,” he explained, “and these can be used to extract physiological variables.”