Wearable Computing and Intelligent Clothing: an approach for new forms of smart personal protective assistants

Abstract: Protective suits with wearable computing components integrated into the textiles can become an ICT based protection concept for workers and demonstrate their viability through. Intelligent Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) adds active characteristics to the passive behavior of the PPE like hard hat, work gloves or gash protection trousers. A smart personal protective assistant (smartPPA) protects the worker with the textile functionality but additionally is aware of the worker and his context in the working environment through the data acquired. Thus the smartPPA estimates potential hazards. This allows supporting the worker by warnings before any harm occurs and by information to avoid the hazard / injury. The control room and team members can be warned and informed as well as the smartPPA can intervene into the working environment taking protective actions. Those new active characteristics of the smartPPA offer a much higher protective potential than the PPE used today.
The integration of computing intelligence into PPE concepts opens opportunities for improvement in further aspects. Combining existing PPE protection functions with computing intelligence enhances limitations of the textile parts of the PPE clothing concerning the protection goals. Embedding those functions into the textile / fiber level of the clothing will lead to improved smart textile technology for various other market domains and lead to a reduction in the weight and bulkiness of the clothing thereby increasing its wearing comfort. Increased wearing comfort leads to reduced physical stress placed on a worker wearing such a PPE. The self-security mechanism of a smartPPA predicts hazardous situations before the smartPPA experiences any damage. This results in a greater lifespan than that of a classical PPE. Cost for repair and replacement are reduced. Production line efficiency is increased as it allows for human interactions with hazardous production lines without emergency or maintenance stop.

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