EUROPEAN TRENDS
Smart rug
Why horse rugs? For horse owners, e-textile technology could make it easy to monitor the health and well-being of their horses anywhere and anytime, as long as they have access to a device connected to the Internet. According to Chi Hwan Lee, an
Are health rugs for horses the next big thing? JESSICA MORTON investigates.
associate professor in Purdue’s Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering: “Adding e-textile properties to existing garments (like horse rugs) helps scientists, researchers and clinicians take advantage of the garments’ already-existing ergonomic designs to secure a commercial grade of wearability, comfortability, air permeability and machine washability.” Because of its unique physical attributes and ability to conform and stretch around the curves and irregular body shapes of equids, fabric is the ideal medium for monitoring a horse’s vital signs. In terms of health assessment, this is a major leap forward. “These specially designed e-textiles can comfortably fit to the body of humans or large animals under ambulatory conditions to collect biosignals from the skin such as heart activity from the chest, muscle activity from the limbs, respiration rate from the abdomen or other vital signs,” Lee explains.
Improve and detect Fabric is also more user-friendly, since placing electrode sensors directly onto
R
a horse’s skin usually necessitates A university study recently published in the Advanced Materials journal explored how the research team managed to convert stretchy off-the-shelf horse rugs into wearable e-textile devices that can monitor equine cardiac, respiratory, and muscular systems.
shaving the hair or applying messy and
means that the rug potentially offers a
alerting veterinarians and caregivers to
To add monitoring capabilities to the rugs, the team created a dual regime spray technique, allowing them to directly embed a pre-designed pattern of nanomaterials into the fabric. The sensors were then connected to a portable unit that shared the horse’s vital signs to a laptop via Bluetooth,
potential health problems.
collecting the valuable data in real time.
able to detect anomalies that could point
ecent technological advances in wearable veterinary devices are bringing new levels of monitoring
to horse management. In particular, e-textiles might provide a unique solution to help prevent illness and reduce costs in veterinary management. Biomedical engineers and veterinarians from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, have designed a horse rug which incorporates electronic monitoring technology capable of
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uncomfortable adhesive to keep the device in place. Because numerous contact points are spread over a larger surface area, a rug with sensors is able to collect more data than separate electrodes. This also more accurate observation of a horse’s health and wellbeing at any given time and can record their vital biometrics even when they are healthy. Once a horse’s healthy baselines are established, e-textile technology may be
