Japanese Companies March to Intelligent Apparel Industry

Japanese chemical manufacturers Asahi Kasei Industrial Co., Ltd. will march to the intelligent clothing industry at 2018 summer. They will focus on the products that can get access to human information. Asahi Kasei plans to combine the US subsidiary's medical devices with its own electrically conductive fiber products to develop the new products for first aid applications and other uses.

From the Japanese reports on June 13, Japanese materials companies Toray and Toyobo also plan to achieve the practical use of such products in the medical field. Japan's fiber market has been saturated since last century, the major fiber manufacturing and developing companies want to build the new income pillar from the sports or smart clothing for body health information and health managements.

Asahi Kasei's subsidiary ZOLL is a global company that operates emergency equipment such as life-saving external defibrillator (AED). ZOLL is currently developing the scalable conductive fiber "Roboden" by Asahi Kasei for life jackets. They will achieve the performance of automatic external defibrillation according to ECG and other human information. This will be used for first aid and illness management.

"Asahi Kasei fiber technology center" commitments to analysis of fiber wearing comfort work, it will cooperate with the ZOLL R&D center in United States to promote the specific development. Asahi Kasei started rather late in the field of smart clothing than other Japanese companies, so they will be concentrated in the medical equipment field which is difficult to obtain certification by public sectors to reinforce their competitiveness.

In addition, Toray and NTT use polyester fiber made from permeable electronic polymer to develop a new material called “Hitoe” to read and collect the weak electric signal on the surface of the human body. The application of apparel made by this fiber is to measure the heart rate during sports. It is also used for safety monitoring for factory workers who are in high temperature environment.

Toyobo has also developed a polymer film "COCOMI” combination of conductive materials to be the main functional parts of products that can prevent drivers dozing during the driving process.