Forget your Apple Watch: 'self-powering', health-sensing fabrics that draw energy from our bodies are being worked on as the next evolution of wearables

Date:
Sat, 25 Apr 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Description:
New smart textiles could become the future of wearables for exercise and clinical health monitoring.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Tech Radar Get daily insight, inspiration and deals in your inbox Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more. Become a Member in Seconds Unlock instant access to exclusive member
features. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting
your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Join the club Get full access to premium articles, exclusive features and a growing list of member rewards. Explore An account already exists for this email address, please log in. Subscribe to our newsletter Sustainability Week 2026 This article is part of a series of sustainability-themed articles we're running to observe Earth Day 2026 and promote more sustainable practices. Check out all of our Sustainability Week 2026 content. Even the best smartwatches have a big sustainability problem. Like most other smart gadgets these days, they are sealed units, without the ability to be mended and repaired, unless you send one back to the original company under warranty and even then, they often end up on the scrap heap anyway. E-waste is a major concern of any small gadget containing tiny computing technology and lithium batteries. Some strides have been made. Google , for example, has made the Google Pixel Watch 4 repairable with tiny screws, replaceable displays and batteries. Garmin also has its Power Glass solar charging technology, lengthening the watchs battery life and reducing the amount you need to charge it (if the conditions are right, and you spend three hours in sunlight of 50,000 lux or more). Apple claimed its watches are carbon neutral , but arguments have been made (and lawsuits filed) that this assertion doesnt stand up well to scrutiny. However, theres a new wearable frontier on the horizon one of self-powering, sustainable smart devices.
Best of all, they wont even look like gadgets: theyll be your shirt, your wristband, your yoga mat or even your bedsheet. These devices have technology woven into their fabrics, both to monitor your health and to power themselves using sunlight, moisture, movement or body heat. The smart textiles
revolution is on its way. Article continues below You may like Apple reportedly working on AI smart glasses, an AI pin, and AirPods that can see Smartwatches just aren't cool anymore here are 2 reasons why Why Fitbit's Whoop-style tracker is a better fit for the brand than a smartwatch What are smart textiles? (Image credit: Getty Images / Stefano Madrigali) Smart textiles are described in a review paper published in the Chemical
Engineering Journal as sustainable, self-powered, portable and durable wearable textiles for human health monitoring. MIT researchers gave a broader definition of sensor-embedded garments. Theyre fabrics studded or woven with sensors and other technology that allow the textile to monitor some aspect of the wearer, and connect to a smart device to report and present their findings. A bit like a Whoop band or an old-school Fitbit , but imagine the device spread across a much larger, thinner surface area instead of a single metal-and-plastic puck.

We can have any commercially available electronic parts or custom lab-made electronics embedded within the textiles that we wear every day, creating conformable garments, Canan Dagdeviren, the LG Electronics Career Development Assistant Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT, said in this report . These are customizable, so we can make garments for anyone who needs to have some physical data from their body like temperature, respiration rate, and so forth.

The Chemical Engineering Journal article, a big study and review of existing technology, makes for fascinating (and often intimidating) reading.
Scientists have already found a ton of uses for both clinical and at-home health-monitoring settings. A structure-gradient fibre mat with sensors, for example, can be used for rehabilitating joints, acting as part of a miniature intelligent medical system. At TechRadar, weve tested a smart yoga mat
before, one using similar technology, sensing movement and pressure to score you on your practice.

Elsewhere, wearable textiles could sense heart rate and body temperature for exercise optimization, or even biomarkers for certain diseases such as cancers. Some textile sensors have been able to accurately identify breast cancer biomarkers, and the potential exists to have those biomarkers flagged up in a corresponding app in your smartphone. Get daily insight, inspiration and deals in your inbox Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.

Health-sensing, wearable, washable stockings are also being trialled to monitor swelling in a patient's legs. Not being shackled to one location like your wrist opens up new avenues for sensor tech, and its all comfortable, discreet and non-invasive. How would smart textiles be more sustainable? (Image credit: Getty Images / Stefano Madrigali) The Chemical Engineering Journal report looked at five different ways these textiles might power themselves. They include piezoelectric (another word for a method of powering that turns mechanical joint movement and stress on the fabric into kinetic energy), triboelectric (using static electricity generated through friction and converting that into power for the device), photovoltaic (sunlight), thermoelectric (converting heat especially body heat into energy), and moisture-electric (using water vapor, sweat or similar to turn moisture into electrical energy).

All of them seem to have their strengths and weaknesses. Sunlight is possible to harness in the wearables space, as weve seen with Garmins watches , while thermoelectric smart textiles enable the device to harness body heat for wireless communication systems by generating 2.6 mW of power according to the report, which concludes this flexible thermoelectric generator offers a
viable solution for sustainable, self-powered electronic devices. What to
read next Qualcomms Snapdragon Wear Elite aims to power the next wave of AI wearables not just smartwatches 8 fitness features hiding in your smartwatch that youll actually use Meta's dismal record on data collection means I'll be passing on a Meta watch

Having a wearable wristband, shirt, patch or something else that takes energy from your body or the sun, converting it into its own power source, is a lot more sustainable than throwing away a lithium battery-powered device every
few years because its parent company stopped making the software to support it. Potential pitfalls of the technology The problem? While important breakthroughs have been made, and were seeing the first smart textiles come
to market, itll be a while before self-powering devices are the norm. The researchers state that while offering advantages such as uninterrupted monitoring, comfortable wearability, and low total cost of ownership, the biggest barriers to wide adoption at the minute include sensing accuracy falling short of clinical devices and an absence of unified standards.

Manufacturing costs are still relatively high, and other issues include reduced sensor effectiveness after repeated washing, and long-term sweat corrosion. If your sensors dont work after a spin in the washing machine, a sweaty run or a feverish night, youll have to get a new shirt, contributing both to e-waste and the fast fashion crisis at the same time.

So, while it will be a few years yet before we see smart textiles that power themselves come to fruition, its an exciting prospect. Not only will
wearables get smaller and thinner, theyll also become more sustainable, reducing the amount of smartwatches and other health monitoring devices in landfill and opening up new avenues for monitoring patients in healthcare.
The future looks bright bright enough, maybe, to power your shirt for a few days. Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/health-fitness/forget-your-apple-watch-self-powering -health-sensing-fabrics-that-draw-energy-from-our-bodies-are-being-worked-on-a s-the-next-evolution-of-wearables


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