TEXTILES ─ Wearables
THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF WEARABLES AFFOA blazes a trail for functional fabrics. By Cary Sherburne
W
e hear a lot about Industry 4.0 and how we can benefit from connecting our production equipment to other parts of the plant, or to the outside world. Now Industry 4.0 is coming to your closet – in the form of connected clothmission is to rekindle ing and other wearthe domestic textile able items – and industry through even to fabricinnovation. Taking an based home inteindustry as old as the rior items such as textiles industry and carpets, drapes, transforming it by shades and more. introducing advanced Sasha Stolyarov, CEO of Advanced Sound like a materials, processes Functional Fabrics of futuristic fantasy? and applications has America (AFFOA) It’s not as far away become a national as you might think. I recently movement that involves many spoke to Sasha Stolyarov, CEO universities and corporations. of Advanced Functional Fabrics The big challenge is innovating in of America (AFFOA), one of a space that has not seen much nine Manufacturing USA instiinnovation in centuries. We are tutes. AFFOA has been a leader used to certain functionalities in research and development from textiles, and those funcfor fiber and fabric computing, a tionalities are very different than key to creating next-generation what we expect from technology wearables – although Stolyarov like cell phones or computers.” prefers not to use that term. Part of the persona, as it “Our focus is on functional were, of AFFOA, is a collection fibers and fabrics,” he said. “Our of disparate expertise under
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one roof. “You can’t have just textile companies innovating in textiles,” Stolyarov said. “You can’t reignite innovation with expertise in just one area. You have to bring in electronics, photonics, software and coupling that with textiles, collaborate across these traditionally separate industries. Having all that expertise under one roof is what makes us unique.” So what does fiber and fabric computing actually mean? One thing AFFOA has been working on is getting computer chips into fibers. “Just a year and a half ago, we were making progress on getting light-emitting diodes and simple two-terminal devices into fibers and textiles,” he said. “Now we are at
WhatTheyThink - Wide-Format&Signage | May 2021
4/15/21 8:40 AM
