State of the Art in Additive Hybrid Electronics by NextFlex and its Partners

Additive manufacturing methods offer countless new opportunities for electronics applications, and even more so when combined with other emerging technologies such as functional fabrics. NextFlex, Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA), and the Drexel University Center for Functional Fabrics, are collaborating to integrate physiological and situational awareness monitoring electronics into soldiers' garments for their safety and security in the field. The project team has integrated additively manufactured hybrid electronics and functional fabrics into a soldier’s shirt, body armor vest, and helmet creating a wired and wireless network of sensing and communication devices.
While this project was focused on military applications, there is clearly an appetite for civilian applications as well. This framework of sensing, compute, and communications integrated imperceptibly into textile systems has significant merit for applications including occupational safety or athletic physiological monitoring. In this talk, we will describe both the challenges that the team faced as well as some of the innovative solutions implemented during the project.