27442
>> Asta Roseway: Hi everyone. Thank you for coming today for our
presentation on wearable technologies and soft sensors. I am thrilled
to be presenting to you Akseli Reho. He's the CEO of Cloting+, a
Finnish company. His company has been researching and developing soft
sensor technologies for the last 15 years. So today he's going to
present to you some of the work they've been doing so I'll give you
Akseli.
>> Akseli Reho:
[applause]
Thank you.
Yeah. My name is Akseli Reho, and I'm very happy to see that so many
of you are here to listen to this story that I have in my mind.
So first a big picture how we see the market. It was about ten years
ago when we last time saw increasing activity around the wearables.
There was a company called Phillips, Levis, France Telecom and many
others. Kind of excited about this opportunity. But all that time,
ten years ago, actually the bubble exploded and the business almost
vanished.
Now we are seeing the same thing increasing activity of lots of news,
lots of fresh releases in the product launches are happening. And
we're happy to see that the majority of the concepts that are behind
the launches and presentations are more user-oriented, are more based
on the real needs and the real behavior, and even on top of that I'm
happy to say that the technology that is behind the launches are far
more mature than it was ten years ago.
I would say that ten years ago everything that was launched was
completely unable to fit on the washing machine, for example. At the
moment when we see the launch, when we see the activities, everything
is washable. And many other logistical things, price sensitivities,
has been built from the different approaches.
So we believe that we are absolutely happy that the activity in this
space is increasing. But we are somehow very confident that this time
this will fly. Briefly how we see the market, first of all we see the
E textile applications. There's thermal things. There can be therapy
or treatment and there can be the heating and cooling functions. There
can be feedback functions.
A lightning illumination is another application area. It can be an
indicator. It can be a visual feedback. It can be the communication,
what do you want to say by your clothing. It can be made with
illumination effects. Then there's a haptic world, where the different
kind of user interfaces are built on top of the E textile and wearable
thinking. There can be switches. There can be game controllers.
There can be [inaudible], there can be other things.
And the fourth main application area, it's the sensors. So there's
lots of application areas where the sensors can be used but the bottom
line is that you do the sensing through the wearable and textile-like
materials.
How is the market? So where these applications are used, there's
clearly a safety and professional market out there which is using these
applications. There's a fitness and wellness. There's this
infotainment market and health and medical market. And actually where
the clothing plus sees most of the fruitful and meaningful applications
or launches happening at the moment, they have something to do with the
sensors. And they fit on these two markets. Of course we are looking
at the other opportunities as well. But we as a Cloting+ small, still
small company, we have to be very careful to follow the real market
behavior and commercial activities. So these green boxes highlights
the area where Cloting+ is very active.
So our vision is to make comfortable wearable electronics. And we feel
that by approaching this vision through the textiles, we have extremely
nice material in hand. Because textile is very comfortable material.
So if we are able to integrate the sensors, for example, into the
textile material, we are almost in feel of comfortability immediately.
So we feel by approaching this with textiles, we are there.
And when we are focusing on sensing, we feel that all the wearables,
all clothing-related, all accessories related things kind of offers
very natural platform for doing sensing. And especially when we think
about, for example, the clothes, the textile material-based clothes, we
immediately understand that we get a bit pretty fruitful information
base to integrate the sensors, since we are in touch with the textiles,
no matter are we sleeping, running, working, we are in touch with the
textiles over a very large area. And there is even textiles -- there's
even pieces of clothing and pieces of accessories that are in very
tight, tight connection with the user. For example, the bra or the
underpants, they already have an interface to touch the body very
naturally. And we have accepted those pieces to be warn over the days.
So we feel that textile and clothing approach gives us a very good tool
to realize that vision and keep that focus viable.
This is something that I say that presents our academic slide. So I'm
not going to give you any more detailed education, but these are the
main findings what we have found out. The basic strength of textile
integrated wearable sensors. So, first of all, as I said last time,
the last slide, it's very natural to put on and comfortable to wear. I
would even say that it's the most natural thing to put on, is the
clothes. In some cases also the correct sensor placement is viable.
So to get the sensors on the right positions, without anybody helping
you, it somehow comes into the picture through clothing. For example,
we did a vest, a sensor vest. I come back to this later, but we did a
sensor vest with Phillips. And their requirement was that they need to
get sensors placed in tolerance of one centimeter. Every time that
they put the sensors on.
Typically that needs almost a medical kind of -- some kind of medical
professional to help you to glue or place the sensors with that
tolerance. But we were able to design a garment, a vest, that
repeatability places the sensors on the tolerance of one centimeter.
So it gets the repeatability, but it also gets the one-time reliable
sensor connection and sensor placement. We also see that the
requirement required cables between the sensors and between the sensors
and electronics.
Those can be hidden into the textile form factor. Seems textiles, for
example, the vest, underwear, whatever, they already have the large
area going around the body, why not integrate the wires into the same
platform and get them vanished, because if there would be any kind of
wire hassle, hanging wires, whatever, that will both destroy the
measurements, because it can make the movement or behavior different.
But it also can destroy the signals, since when you are feeling that
somebody's seeing that you are doing a measurement and you can get
mentally loaded from that position, that sensing is somehow visible.
By hiding the sensors into the textiles, you can get the sensors
vanished. And you can live as you want.
So we believe that by integrating the sensors into the textiles, we can
do very long-term sensing without loading anybody into this environment
at all mentally.
Then some kind of concrete things. What have we done in this business?
Are we only talking or have we already done something? Luckily we have
done something. As I said, the business kind of patterns or the bit
vision of wearables, it collapsed about ten years ago. Luckily we
survived.
We walked to [inaudible] who was the giant at that time in the heart
rate sensing, and we told them that we could transfer -- we could
further develop the plastic cold heart rate sensor strap to become
comfortable textile-like, easy to put on.
And they understood it immediately. They said that actually one of the
biggest obstacles on selling the heart rate systems was the hard
plastic coat piece of -- electronics that you had to wear.
And this was actually the product that made, helped us survive, to stay
in business, but also start learning and start understanding what is
really the business behind the wearable sensors.
But this was an example which we launched with Polar more than ten
years ago, and of course we were thrilled to be able to work with a
company like Polar. But also we were really thrilled to be on the
market with the real product.
And we were following very closely that will this be a sustainable
long-term meaningful trend in the product evolution, or will this be
only a short-term fashion thing, something for the marketing guys to
get benefit out of and then they would kind of back to the plastic
straps. But, no, they didn't back up. The consumer feedback was so
overwhelming that they, consumers insisted to have more textile straps.
So that turned out that textiles can be used as a single or sensor,
signal connectors, signal wiring method in a demanding sensor
environment. So there's lots of distortions, lots of movement,
artifacts, lots of moisture, lots of problems in this area. So if we
are able to do a textile sensors that reaches high quality requirements
that comes from the Polar, we felt that this is really a doable thing.
And actually the competitors felt the same way. The other companies,
they naturally they gave us a ring after a couple of years that can
they have the same thing.
And now we are supplying millions of straps. So at the moment we are
on top of the others, we are supplying the [inaudible] Garmin, Adidas,
Timex, all these companies are buying clothing from Cloting+, but we
have also further developed, pushed, designed the straps. It's not any
more the same that you saw ten years ago, but the idea is the same, but
the design and performance is even better.
So this is something that has happened. This is something that is
really commercially existing. It's machine washable. It's durable.
It's everything that is requested from the demanding electronics
industry.
Very logical thing to ask after having the textile strap, especially
from the females, is why don't you integrate the strap and the bra
together? Because majority of the users, the female users, they have
the problem on wearing the bra and the strap at the same time. Because
they are overlapping the same part of the body.
And since the bra is already knee deep there from the physical reasons,
it's difficult to say that try to use the strap on the same place,
because it's almost impossible. So the people, they kept asking that
why don't you integrate these two worlds together. And this obvious
question has kind of gave us a guts and feeling to start integrating
these two things. This is actually the vision that we had already more
than ten years ago.
But we were not able to do that vision or implement that vision
commercially, because there were no removable transmitters. So we had
to do the straps first with the detachable transmitter to be able to
jump into this business.
And at the moment we are -- we feel that we are in front of the huge
opportunities, and at the moment we are supplying the sensors to Danish
company Pure Lime. We are shipping to Lululemon. We are shipping to
Adidas and Under Armour got something. But still there is a big
underwear companies, sports underwear companies who has understood that
this integration is meaningful. This integration makes the usability,
makes the heart rate sensing even more comfortable for the users. You
don't need to wear anything extra. Just put the sports clothes on and
you will be monitored.
And from the business-wise, this is naturally much bigger opportunity
than the strap business. Because we feel -- we believe that
especially -- especially on the women's clothing business, we believe
that after five years almost every high end sports underwear should
include the sensors. Already today the difference, for example, the
price difference, if you buy the Pure Lime or Lulu Lemon bra, with
sensors or without sensors, the price difference in shop is only five
Euros. So the price difference is almost meaningless thing. And even
if we get further down to this business, it will be smaller.
I have some samples with me. Probably we make it so that I show you
something here. But if after the presentation you feel that you want
to get your hands on to this, please come and look.
So this is the bra with the place for the transmitter and the
integrated sensors. You must wet the sensors. It's not for -- it's
not required for everybody. But majority of the people needs to get a
good sensor skin contact through the water. This is a shirt that we
have created and what we are manufacturing to Adidas. This is a shirt
for especially for the soccer players. And the uniqueness in this
shirt is that typically the transmitter is located in between the
sensors. Because the soccer, the chest is the control area for the
ball, you can't have the transmitter here. And that's the reason why
we have wired or placed, still placed the centers here on the fruitful
areas where you have the strong signal, but instead of having
transmitter here, we have built the wiring system to put the
transmitter on the back. So actually I can turn this around to show
you how the wiring is built up. So there are sensors. And then
there's wiring system and there's a pocket for the transmitter.
>>: [indiscernible]
>> Akseli Reho:
That's a good idea.
Yeah.
>>: Why aren't you -- is there a reason you're not putting sensors at
the back, just the front so you get the wiring?
>> Akseli Reho: Yes. In some applications it would be possible. But
especially in the -- within top athletes, with lots of movement
artifacts, lots of other distortions, we must sense from the area where
the signal is strongest. And since we have a maps, kind of academic
maps, where the signal is strongest. And it's around the chest. Of
course, there is a place to do it from the back as well, but we would
lose a bit of the reliable signal.
But that's a good question. If we go more low intensive training
sessions, the heart rate can be read from very many different places,
from the shoulders as well from the hip.
>>: How are these movements? Because I would imagine for soccer
players, with the ball, running around, you're not going to contact
most of the time
>> Akseli Reho: Actually, that's not the loose shirt. That's quite
tight, well-fitting shirt. But, of course, you still lose the signal
sometimes when there comes a real collision or somebody's pushing you,
you will lose the signal.
>>: [inaudible]
>> Akseli Reho:
top leagues.
Yes, this is widely used in the MSL and the European
>>: I noticed when you go around a curve you actually flip, isn't there
a way you can just weave in a curve?
>> Akseli Reho: Those are the most production effectiveness questions
and as well insulation questions. So there's lots of different kinds
of requirements for the signal wiring, and we got the best combination
between the cost and the manufacturability and the signal quality by
doing it like that.
>>: But if you can do anything, if cost wasn't an issue, you could ->> Akseli Reho: Then we could do whatever. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
There's lots of options. There has been lots of cost optimization in
that. Yeah.
>>: Are you selling the actual monitor as well and if you -- what
happens if you don't remove it from the piece of clothing when you wash
it?
>> Akseli Reho: Yeah, that's a good question. There's completely
possibility to do it fully integrated. It needs a bit more expensive
battery, because the typical coin cell battery it will explode in the
washing machine, the temperature load is too high. But it's easy to
select a bit higher temperature range, battery, and integrate that in.
So we have a good understanding how to integrate it permanently. And
personally I believe on that. There is not going to be any more
removable things after a couple of years.
At the moment, they're still removable things. And the other question
that -- do we sell also the module? We have a couple of partners with
whom we have kind of developed and validated that the combination works
perfectly. And at the moment actually I'm happy that you asked, is
that we are selling absolutely the smallest transmitter on the market
and in the same package there's also the most minimalistic connector.
This is not so valid on the straps but we're very happy that we were
able to remove the snaps from the bra, because it didn't look so good.
But I'll come back to this later. But I believe on integration.
a couple of years you can't remove the transmitter.
After
>>: [inaudible]
>> Akseli Reho: So this is one trend, one business that shows the
value of integrating clothing and sensors together.
>>: One more question. On the battery life now and the future whether
it's going to be possible to wear this and record the entire day rather
than just an hour running
>> Akseli Reho: Absolutely. Yes. Actually, one of the most power
consuming thing is transmitting. So if you would just be recording it,
the power consumption level goes dramatically down. So I don't see any
major problem on that. It can be thousands of hours that you can
record the data with.
>>: [inaudible]
>> Akseli Reho:
Yes.
>>: And then the battery can be recharged
>> Akseli Reho:
Or replaced.
>>: For ten bucks, the batteries every day
>> Akseli Reho:
Sorry?
>>: You don't have to spend money on batteries every day
>> Akseli Reho:
Not every day, no, no, one battery per year, like.
>>: Already in the market or it's just going to happen in the next
couple of years?
>> Akseli Reho: How would I say. If I recall it right, this
transmission technology, it covers like thousand hours. 1,000 hours,
roughly.
>>: Maximum
>> Akseli Reho: Yeah. But if you would remove the transmission from
here, it's completely off-the-shelf stuff. Kind of switch off the
transmitter by software.
And because somehow we are proud that we are able to do this business
on quite demanding environment, both from the cost-wise, design-wise
and the signal quality-wise. So all this sweat, all this movement, all
the designer's requirements and the cost requirements, we have solved
the problems. So actually we believe that it's quite easy to move away
and move further in this business and integrate the sensors in other
applications as well.
I have another example, the vest that I already referred. We made a
vest with Phillips. So Phillips is one of the companies who believes
in home healthcare. They believe that the chronicle diseases chronicle
problems that people have, they should be treated at the home. The
hospital is -- the hospital environment it's good for acute problems
but not good for the chronicle things.
And actually the Phillips identified a problem that is the heart
compensation. So a huge amount of people have a weak heart. That's
very well known. And when the heart gets too weak, it happens -- I
couldn't say that my heart is getting weaker. It happens kind of
without an alarm. And when the heart gets too weak, it starts to
accumulate the water in the lungs. And the Phillips said that if you
are able to measure the amount of the water in the lungs and especially
if you are able to do the trend analysis, draw the trend line, how the
water accumulation is going, or accumulating there, it could be the way
to give an estimation or indication for both user itself or the patient
itself or the doctors, to start dehydration, medication and some other
treatment to avoid the hospitalization and critical care. And that was
a great challenge. Could you please design a vest or the piece of
clothing that is easy to put on, easy to do sensing and easy to kind of
maintain.
And we developed a vest
bioimpedance, the water
that the patient, he or
five minutes. They can
with Phillips that measures through
accumulated into the lungs. And the idea is
her, they put the vest on every morning for
drink coffee, read the paper, watch TV,
something not very active,
measures during these five
it's not only one kind of,
every morning. So you are
but still live normally. And the vest
minutes the water level in the lungs. And
one time measurement, the idea is to do it
able to do the trend line analysis.
And actually we are very happy that this vest, it just passed the
clinical studies in Europe. So there was a thousand people from males,
females, fat, thin, whatever different things were there. And a
thousand people they were all using the vest for one year. And it was
easily shown that the vest really detected when the water starts
accumulating into the lungs. Even ten days before the hospitalization
started. So ten days is a good timeframe to start reacting and start
giving the right medication and other treatments.
So we are very happy to see that we are able to bring this technology,
this wearable easily accepted effective sensing approach also to the
space of home healthcare. And we are very proud to work with the
companies like Phillips since they are good in their business and they
are very demanding against us.
It has been also -- yes, please.
>>: Can you talk about the electrode you had in that vest?
require water before you use them and so forth
Did they
>> Akseli Reho: Yes they still require the water. Yes, you can take
the vest. Yeah. Yeah. And we believe further in the home healthcare.
We believe that the sensors in the home will help users to get many
benefits out of the continuous long-term sensing.
>>: Who owns it?
The hospital owns this?
>> Akseli Reho: Actually, Phillips takes care of that. We just design
the vest and sell the vest to Phillips. They have the deals with the
[inaudible] companies. So we are not working directly with the
hospitals.
>>: So the subject you use in the study were ordered as prehypertensive
or hypertensive if they have any sort of heart condition or was this
just randomly pick people out of ->> Akseli Reho: Those were -- the team or the group that was chosen to
be the validation group, they all had one heart attack in their
history. So they were clearly a target group. So there was a big
prediction that something bad will happen. So one interesting learning
was of course from this project since Phillips they have to be very
honest what they do, they have to choose the right way of working. It
was also interesting to work with them and understand that why did they
chose a wearable textile-like approach since they had a palette of
glued electrodes, plastic things, even implants to do that. But it was
so nice to learn and work with them and get confirmation that there are
things that are very kind of valid to do through the wearable textile
sensing.
So in the very big picture, we believe that actually textiles and
sensors gives an extremely nice platform for motivation, show the
effectiveness of the medication, give people a reason to believe on or
get some evidences on if they change their lifestyle. It's quite
reregarding to learn something, when you switch something, it really
affects on some parameters in your body.
For example, one example, one example that I just learned that I'm not
sure I know the English words, but one of the most dangerous fat types
is actually the fat around some inner parts of your body. It's
interesting to learn that when you start to do any kind of sport, any
kind of activity, that will be the first fat to be burned. And it
would be so important to tell people that two or three things, two or
three times when you did a sport, really had a critical effect on the
body. Without any sensors, it's quite problematic to see the real
change. For example, by just measuring the weight, it comes too slow.
With this kind of clever sensing method, it could be possible to give
the feedback even faster.
So we believe that different kind of wearable sensors will be there.
And we hope to be in a major role while this trend happens. What we
promise in Cloting+ is that we can integrate almost whatever sensor
into the textiles. So we are not stuck with heart rate or
bioimpedance, not at all. We would like to see from our customers our
business-to-business customers that they have a need. They have a need
to sense reliably from the body something. And then we walk in and we
do it. We design the clothes. We integrate the sensors. We do the
needed wirings, we need the needed connections and we make it happen.
And here is a list of some sensors that we have been integrating. And
that should be a reference or proof of concept that we can integrate
almost anything into the textiles.
>>: I assume the answer is no, but is there any way to sense pain?
>> Akseli Reho:
Yeah.
>>: Localized, you know, where someone's feeling pain
>> Akseli Reho: I'm not sure that. But you can see pain easily from
the heart rate reliability. When you get -- there's a great academic
study that when people are in dentist, what happens for their heart
rate when they get hurt. It's not getting up. It starts to tick like
a clock. So there's no reliability. But how to localize it, I'm not
sure about that yet. But we could, for example, do -- we could
integrate the microphone into the clothes. We can integrate -- the
microphone, I love the idea, too, listen the sounds from the joints to
be able to do some kind of conclusions that how are you doing. We can
sense the temperatures, bending, stretching, we have been integrating
optical sensors into the clothes. Accelerometers. Yeah.
>>: What permission do you get around bending and stretching?
>> Akseli Reho: It's hard to define clearly, because you can do the
predictions, how straight you are, standing or how the arms are moving
or almost ->>: Lack of flexibility?
>> Akseli Reho: Flexibility could be one thing to be measured. And
probably the combination, bending and stretching and accelerometers to
get the postures on the ground and stuff like that.
But actually typically the best, best possible case is that consumer,
the business-to-business customer walks into Cloting+ saying that our
customer base needs to know this. And to be able to tell them this, we
need to sense these things from the body. And then we are the partners
who solves that.
>>: What piece of clothing or [inaudible] piece of clothing will
integrate most of this stuff in a way you can wear it all day?
>> Akseli Reho: I would say that all these sensors we can integrate
into the textile materials. So it's only a matter of piece of garment,
are you wearing a hat all day? If so, then we can do it EEG. If you
are wearing the pants all day, we can do the heart rate. We can do
some optical sensing here.
>>: How would you go about having something to test, lots of these
signals being acquired for a long time?
>> Akseli Reho: How would we do it? We would build some amount of
prototypes. We have -- how would I say, Cloting+, we have the building
blocks. We have the methods to do connectors. We have the methods to
do wiring. We have the methods to do the sensor integration. So it
takes a couple of months for us to build the ten clothes with the
specified or selected sensors. And then we test it. But typically we
need somebody from business of electronics or for consumer
understanding to commonly define how really to do it.
>>: Question
>> Akseli Reho:
Yeah.
>>: So with accelerometers and microphones and things like that, are
you actually printing those electronics so they're integrated in the
fabric? Are you using conventional men's technology built by
semiconductor manufacturers, putting them on a board or Capton
substrate and then integrating that Capton substrate into the fabric
itself?
>> Akseli Reho: Yeah, good question. We are not in the business of
developing the sensors. So we just want to integrate existing
commercially approved miniaturized cost-effective sensors into the
textiles. So we are not printing or developing the sensors on our own.
Only some very rare ones. But typically we choose with our customer
the sensors that they want to have in the clothes. And then we do it.
Our platform, our building blocks enables kind of it opens the fruitful
platform to integrate almost whatever kind of sensors.
>>: Are you using Capton substrate, are you using a flexible substrate
like Capton or are you using a more rigid substrate like FR-4 or
something just small?
>> Akseli Reho: Seems our vision is to do as comfortable things as
possible. We're only working with flexible things. Yeah.
>>: What's [inaudible] for washing? I know that you've got your pads
are the same material as in the runs, the silver encoded fabric, and
the last time I saw that, after 25 washes, you're no longer able to get
reliable contact. What curves are you seeing for lessons for currently
shipping [inaudible]
>> Akseli Reho: Yeah. Washability is one of the main challenges,
because it's something new that electronics industry hasn't faced so
far. So we actually have to push our material suppliers and push
ourselves to do the method to integrate the system so that it can be
washable.
>>: I can believe it will survive washing, but unless there's some sort
of update it looks like just the same material, I wouldn't expect it to
function after between 25 and 50 washes, like once it occurs is
obsolescence.
>> Akseli Reho:
We test all the way to 100 cycles.
>>: You're getting -- what's your usage for your failure roll over
that? Are you using 100 percent usage over 100 cycles?
>> Akseli Reho: I have one curve for you. Maybe that's so detailed
question that we have to get into this more careful, because it depends
on what signal you are sensing there.
>>: The main -- I will bug you about this later but my main question is
when you sell that, you have to say you can get a year's worth of use
out of it, if I'm running once a week, that's fine, but if I'm running
every day and it breaks in six months, what's your window that your -what's your commercial story?
>> Akseli Reho: Our story is, for example, when we worked with Adidas,
we want to promise from our components more than they are promising to
their customers. So what they typically they promise is from 40 to 50
washing cycles. That's what they promise to their customers.
>>: One more time?
>> Akseli Reho: 40 to 50 washing cycles, what the big brands promises
to their customers.
So this was just for the inspiration that we are not stuck with the
heart rate. We would like to see whatever ideas to be sensed from the
body, and we tried to be the expert to do that.
Few slides about our company. So on top of which resources we really
do this, we have 25 persons in R&D to do the development itself.
There's mechanical engineers. There's natural textile engineers.
There's material sourcing, prototyping.
We have our own factory in China. What's unique in this story is that
whatever we design we promise we can mass produce. We have the same
technologies in Finland R&D, we have exactly the same technologies in
China where we do millions of these products per year. Here is
something about the technologies that we use. We used to think that,
assuming it would not be good enough for this, but no it wasn't. We
had to kind of reinvent the set of the technologies to be able to do
the integration.
We have different kind of methods for the connector assembly. We use
wide laser cutting. We have three different lamination technologies to
put the components and textiles together. We have ultrasonic welding
where we sew the textiles in the different methods. We have the
dispensing. We have the methods to do the printed electronics. We
have lots of electrical functionality in line in the production side,
and as well the machine vision.
All this is needed to meet the requirements of the sensors. Sensor
industry. They are not happy with the tolerances of some centimeters.
They need to get the exact insulations, waterproof layers, shielding
structures and everything should be in tolerance of some tens of
millimeters. So we had to jump away from the multiply hand work to
mechanized and new production methods. These are not completely new in
the world but we're trying to push them in the form factor of textiles.
As I said, this is really mass production already. These are not
prototypes, we're doing millions of these products, textile-integrated
sensors. This is something that I always want to tell that we don't
have anything off the shelf. So there's no warehouse where you can buy
the Cloting+ products. We always do it based on customers' needs. So
we have development service after we have understood what the customer
needs, we do it, exactly like they want. And then we have the
production service. So the link between these two stories is that
whatever is developed there, it's seamlessly transferred to real mass
production environment in China. And there we have so much focus on
the quality.
Some facts about the company itself. So this story has started in
1998. At the moment, last year, our sales was in dollars. It was
about $10 million. And 27 persons in R&D plus some marketing and sales
guys.
Then at the end I throw you three technology news. I tell about the
building blocks that we have developed to be able to implement the
vision. These three things has been developed within last year. The
first is actually the invention, our marketing guy came up with an idea
of sensor wire. So the idea is that here we have the pant, the running
pant or cycling pant to measure the EMG -- EMG activity from the front
leg to the back leg, to be able to guide the user to use the body
symmetrically, but that's well, for example, for the biking, you are
able to adjust the height of the saddle to be able to use symmetrically
or optimally the front and the back leg models.
>>: Things like cadence, title angle, left to right, power, things like
that, or is it still -- like I can put a lot of sensors on my pedals
and it would be great to pick that up without having to use other kinds
of ->> Akseli Reho:
The biking -- biking is -- this is something.
>>: I realize it's not an easy problem.
So --
>> Akseli Reho: It's not an easy problem. And this comes to the same
problem from the different angle. And especially when you are doing
running or skiing, when you don't have the mechanical bike where to
integrate the sensors, the pants is the quite fruitful place to locate
the sensors. But here we -- that's actually pretty much the same
technology that you saw in the Adidas shirt. It's even further
optimized than what is here. But the idea is to use the same material
as a sensor and as a wire.
So actually we eliminated one connection interface here. There is
still one connection interface where the wire is turned out to be a
plastic connector, where the module itself is clipped in and the
information is sent to the phone.
This is mass producible way on doing a wiring and sensor structures on
the pants. I can put this also to go through.
The other technology is actually, again, a fancy name, Trace Base.
This is something that we have invested quite a lot during last year.
And we have done a technology study and a development to be able to do
PCB, printed PCB, that has a good washing resistance. So the good part
of this story is that in this platform we can integrate almost whatever
existing sensors or LEDs or components. So there's a pat we can put
the components on. And the wire structure itself is also washable. So
here I show you some graphs of these studies. So here, for example, 85
washing cycles and the resistance over the 40 centimeters has increased
but it fits on the material of the concept where we are aiming.
So this is over85 washing cycles, the resistance changed. The other
graph that helps to understand this technology a bit better is this is
a typical flexible copper PCB. This is a bending stretch, a bending
test. The typical copper wire in some point it just gets broken. But
what happens to our trace base technology, the variance gets bigger,
but it doesn't get broken. And it's still only some OMs where you are
living. So it's not a clear line, but so far what we have managed to
develop is good enough for the majority of the concepts and the
technologies where this is aiming. But the idea is that we are able to
do layers with the printed technology and meet the washing
requirements. And especially what's great in that is we're also able
to make it very comfortable.
By quick look, you could think that this is a bit ugly to put on. This
can't be comfortable. But actually this is an example how it almost
vanishes into the clothing. So here we have this technology integrated
in. And here actually exactly the same technology but it's also made
to be stretchy.
So by building the fabric layers and place this in between, you can
make this electronics both washable but also stretchable.
>>: So these last two examples, they're examples of the tracing
technology
>> Akseli Reho:
Yeah.
>>: It's not a sensor
>> Akseli Reho:
You're right.
>>: Just a tracer
>> Akseli Reho: You're right. And we have the technology to integrate
the sensors on the tracer. And also the connectors on the tracer.
>>: So this is a future whereby the material itself is one big tracer,
start to [inaudible] the body, so to speak,
>> Akseli Reho: Exactly. And then we have a specific technologies to
integrate those tracers into the textile material to make it
comfortable and easy to put on.
And actually the third technology news is it has something to do with
lots of to do with the connectors. Some of the underwear companies,
they are very allergic on the snaps. They don't see the reason why you
have two big bulky metal pieces in the sophisticated nicely designed
bra. And we agree them completely. And that was the reason why we
developed a connector called Flat Snap. So we removed majority of
unnecessary metal from the snap and made it as flat as possible to make
it possible to almost disappear into the textile structure. And the
shirt, what you have in your hand, there is also the Flat Snap
connector present on the back.
So it's almost disappeared.
>>: The snaps, where the [inaudible] snaps
>> Akseli Reho: That's a good question. We have other options but the
snaps they have extremely good mechanical spring structure in it to be
able to avoid the movement artifacts.
>>: You could use like magnets with the same material you're using,
pretty common technique gives you [inaudible]
>> Akseli Reho:
What was the technique that you referred?
>>: Magnets.
>> Akseli Reho:
Magnets.
>>: Under the same silver hooded material.
>> Akseli Reho: Yeah, yeah, magnets is an option, yeah, but there is
also the limitations on the magnets. They are not so stable over the
time. You can lose the effect. They are somehow they are, if you get
them kind of you can break the magnets. And if you are sensitive with
the magnets, some of the people they don't want to wear the magnets,
and they are not so cost-effective. That's quite cost-effective thing.
I completely follow you. We can do the magnets, that's a great
technology. Beso far our customers, we've tried it many times but the
customer commercial things never end up to be using magnets. But
magnets is a great thing. Magnets is absolutely a great thing.
Yeah. So the springs. The spring structure on the snap has been
copied into the Flat Snap idea. And somehow the story behind the heart
rate sensor business shows that the snap is very reliable and
functional connector type.
>>: Also potentially allow you to straddle your circuit across several
garments and different clothings?
>> Akseli Reho: Why not. You just need to have on the other piece of
the apparel, you need to have the female side and on the other side you
should have the male side. And just clip those in, yeah. That's
possible, absolutely.
>>: That's mainly if you want to wear a base piece of sensor and then
extend it with more sensing, with an extra piece of clothing
>> Akseli Reho: Yeah, that's one option. Absolutely. Yeah. So that
was just to give you an idea that the connector technology is the third
main part where we are working. So I would say that it's the
connectors. It's the tracers. And it's the platform for as many
sensors as possible where we are focusing. And we feel that if we are
able to offer these building blocks, our customers are quite capable on
defining their dreams on top of these technologies. And we really
would love to throw you a question that this is what we have done with
the others and would be very exciting to do something with the
Microsoft. And actually the question is what could we do with you?
>>: What would be the difficulty in sending the technology over to
using BTLEs that could talk to devices and phones?
>> Akseli Reho:
Actually, these transmitter, this is BTLE.
>>: Protocol for it, for talking to it?
>> Akseli Reho:
Yeah.
>>: [inaudible] you can get?
>> Akseli Reho: To be very precise, this is not made by Cloting+.
This is made by one of our partners. But they are very open minded and
they just want to make this fly high and see this used as widely as
possible. But BTLE is actually one of the main radio technologies
where the sports industry is lying. Yeah.
>>: What's the most common software interface that users are using to
access the data?
>> Akseli Reho: How would I say that? Can you help me with this?
Actually, Cloting+, we are not so good in software, that's why we are
here. So where we are good -- we want to integrate the sensors. And
then we need somebody to do the electronics, who transfers the signals
into some kind of electrical signal that can be sent to the software
that can actually build value for the customer.
>>: Especially building software generally
>> Akseli Reho: Typically, for example, here software is built by
Garmin. Software is built by [inaudible], software is built by
Phillips. It's very typically our customer who takes care of that.
>>: Can you talk a little bit about batteries? I know that there's
been work in stretchable batteries and other sorts of forms of power.
Have you guys been doing any work any investigation into batteries?
>> Akseli Reho: Yeah. As Cloting+, we haven't done that on our own.
We tried to keep our eyes open and understand where the development is
going. And absolutely I see that when these components are ready
enough, we just need to adapt those. And for some of the players, we
are discussing and trying to push them to meet the washing
requirements. Those are very typically the things that they don't
immediately understand or that they're not even willing to go in this
business, because they see already the value in the stretchability is
so big. But whenever it comes to washable, stretchable things we're
very curious to adapt those pieces into our portfolio, since we are the
integrator.
>> Asta Roseway: Any other questions? Great. Well, thank you
everyone for coming. And Akseli will be here for a little while if you
want to chat with him for a few more minutes.
[applause]