When the father of technology entrepreneur Tony Chahine developed dementia, Chahine pondered a question: How do we communicate with people who cannot?
That experience in 2010 led Chahine to found Myant, a textile computing platform that utilizes sensors knitted and woven into clothing. The first consumer product, SKIIN, is an underwear line expected to be available later in 2019 whose four embedded sensors can collectively track a wearer’s heart rate, breathing rate, temperature, movement, posture, and sleep. Myant is endeavoring to help someone with dementia have his or her needs met through the passive recording of biometrics by the garments he or she wears.
“Our raison d’être is that, at some point, we realized that the human was sort of being left behind by technology—that there was no ambient or direct contact, connecting the human to each other or to the environment or the world around us or technology or AI, etc.,” said Myant EVP Ilaria Valori.
Toronto-based Myant has partnered with crosstown Ryerson University and the Mayo Clinic on research applications, including license to use the Mayo Clinic’s algorithms for heart monitoring and arrhythmia detection. Myant is working toward approval from the FDA in the U.S. as well as Health Canada and the European Union’s CE Mark on certification as a medical device.
Myant is also planning a full wardrobe of garments that will be bidirectional: able to sense and respond. If, for example, a temperature gauge in a sock records a low reading, that might trigger the sock to warm up. The textiles could also send alerts via haptic responses and electroluminescent lighting.
Eventually, the goal is for remote communication from the clothing to a coach, a trainer, a doctor, or a parent. Dr. Paul Friedman, the Mayo Clinic’s chair of cardiovascular medicine, said in a statement that “our collaboration with Myant has the potential to help people access Mayo Clinic healthcare expertise regardless of where they live.”
Because the sensors are all yarn-based, consumers should not expect to easily notice the presence of bulky or hard electronics. Valori said that the underwear has sensors sewn into its band and that they are imperceptible when worn, although they can be felt by running a finger along the surface.
“At the end of the day, you’re not going to feel like you are wearing technology,” said Myant marketing strategist Brian Fung. “You’re going to feel like you’re wearing clothes.”
The underwear line is due to be followed by a heated base layer with full production scheduled for early 2020. Myant has more than 80 engineers and 70 patents as well as an end-to-end production line including a 80,000-square-foot advanced manufacturing facility. Myant has also has deals with textile technology companies Stoll and Carlisle to bolster its offerings.
Most recently, Myant partnered with the Canadian Tire Company, a conglomerate whose holdings include outdoor apparel lines Helly Hansen and Woods, and workwear brand Dakota. The companies are still developing the specific products for release, but they plan to support both connected athletes and workers.
Myant says it was drawn to CTC because of the company’s willingness to collaborate across lines in an all-inclusive manner. Machine learning will be tapped to provide insights based on all of the data inputs. Electrolyte and hydration tracking is in the works.
“We’re trying to show that this interface—by being easy to adopt and by being ambient—can actually represent 24 hours of any one human being so that they can have access to connectivity any time they want,” Valori said.
Myant is also developing a pregnancy band that could able to detect, among other vital signs, heart rates for both mother and baby. Some day, a newborn’s crib sheet might incorporate textile sensors, too, for comprehensive monitoring.
“We see this platform as just the beginning of where life is going anyway,” Valori said.