TEXTILES.ORG
According to a report published by Global Market Insights Inc., the global smart and interactive textiles market is expected to reach about $16.4 billion by 2030 .
Smart and interactive textiles are fabrics integrated with technologies like edge computing, cloud data, artificial intelligence (AI) and Bluetooth® Low Energy (BLE) that can monitor and communicate wearers’ data. Besides accessing and collecting operational data in real time, AI technology provides insights into various applications in the textile industry, such as pattern inspection, defect detection and color matching.
Surging investments in research and development to make highly equipped soldier uniforms have boosted the use of smart and interactive textiles in military and defense applications. Smart textiles in military usage can monitor the wearer’s performance and are outfitted with GPS systems, sensors and activity trackers that offer numerous attributes such as insulating properties, ballistic protection and waterproof fabric. Accelerated by these factors, the military and defense application segment is speculated to grow massively at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 28.5% from 2022 to 2030.
Key reasons for smart and interactive textiles market growth include an increasing penetration in the health care and sports industries, the rapid deployment of wearable electronics in the sports sector, and the rising adoption of photochromic material fabric that changes color when
exposed to light in the fashion industry.