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The Emerging Technologies Conference at Advanced Textiles Expo last November in Indianapolis, Ind., addressed the importance of business connections, academic partnerships and industry support for innovative ideas, with various sessions focused on these topics.
Accelerating R&D
Michael Rein, Ph.D., director of engineering, Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA), spoke at the conference on the topic “Pushing the Boundaries for Dual-Use Applications.” The session, however, moved beyond “dual use” specifically and covered multiple examples of AFFOA’s success stories and new projects underway.
For 13 years, AFFOA has been a leading driver in the development of new textile technologies, helping startups and established businesses alike pursue ideas that benefit from AFFOA’s expertise and mission to accelerate the process to commercialization. Its projects represent a range of industry markets, including defense and security; health care and medical; protective and safety; performance and lifestyle; industrial and architectural; and aerospace, maritime, and automotive, as identified by Rein.
Recent projects include partnerships with industry to develop bio-derived fibers; large-scale PFAS treatment; heater and tactile sensing, as well as tactile sensing for robots; artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled diagnostics for home-based health care; conductive inks; e-textile webbing and others.
Rein explained how AFFOA works to overcome barriers to scalable solutions. “There’s a gap in the manufacturing community in how to scale up,” he says, and he points to the lack of advanced digital design tools. “Design tools are pretty commonly used in other industries, but [many in] the textile industry have used a single tool, maybe, or not at all.”
There are also “skilled workforce gaps,” which present a big challenge to many manufacturers, so AFFOA is also trying to “reduce the entry challenges for new workforce members,” he says.
Using the example of e-textile products in development with AFFOA, Rein says that designers and manufacturers can spend significant time and money designing products on their own. Others are simply hesitant to develop e-textile products due to “technological gaps and lack of prototyping infrastructure.” That’s where AFFOA’s access to expertise and processes can reduce barriers to development and manufacturing and “actually get the product to market.”
To do this, AFFOA developed infrastructure resources for three foundational e-textile elements—conductors, encapsulation and connectors—creating a universal development platform for e-textiles, which enables developers to focus on textile functionality while minimizing hardware and software efforts.
“What our team has done is design an Arduino [an electronics platform] for e-textiles,” he says. “It’s an open-source tool that our members can leverage. … You don’t have to start from scratch.”
Addressing the needs presented by the U.S. military/Department of Defense (DOD) is an ongoing challenge, especially in reducing the amount of weight soldiers carry, which has continually increased over the years. In fact, even with the gear and devices a soldier must carry, “the textiles actually are about 45% of the total weight,” he says.
A Request for Information regarding the DOD’s Design for Manufacturability and Business Case Analysis was recently issued, which offered an opportunity for those “in the cut-and-sew, automation and manufacturing technology sectors to support clothing and textiles modernization.
“We want to know about any mill making uniforms,” he says, due to interest in developing “a new type of uniform or improving the production process.”
Consortium supports training, innovation
A presentation by Bailey Smith, extension coordinator, Zeis Textiles Extension at North Carolina State University, Wilson College of Textiles, outlined the purpose and accomplishments of the Textile Innovation Engine of North Carolina in driving growth in the textile industry.
The Textile Innovation Engine’s stated mission, in part, is “to advance the competitiveness of America’s textile industry through research, development, and commercialization of next-generation materials and processes.”
As a regional “catalyst for global innovation,” the Textile Innovation Engine of North Carolina has 10-year goals of supporting 200 businesses in R&D projects, sustaining and creating 5,000 jobs, educating 30,000 students and workers, and of converting 200 million pounds of waste into circular goods. Through workforce development initiatives and a partnership with the NC Department of Public Instruction, the consortium has already met the goal of providing training and education to 5,000 individuals, and it’s not even two years into the organization’s existence.
The innovation engine has 24 projects underway with its partners. Some are specifically aligned with sustainability objectives, including mechanical and chemical recycling methods, bio-based yarn development, and 3D bio-printing using cellulose waste. Hemp is the focus of two projects: one is working to create a hemp consortium to support hemp processing and hemp yarn development.
“We are trying to de-risk,” Smith says. “The farmers don’t want to grow it, unless there’s a market.” Another project aims to develop wound-healing textiles with hemp.
The engine’s research and findings have been published, with some projects submitted for future publication and more research underway. The Textile Innovation Engine has also received a patent and about $1 million in research funding.
The Textile Innovation Engine also focuses on workforce development by building a “strategic roadmap” to create an “integrated continuity of experience for current and future textile workers and students,” specifically for and in partnership with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. “There will be more than 5,000 students who will take this curriculum this year,” she says.
Augmented reality training projects
An augmented reality (AR) workforce project under development by the Textile Innovation Engine of North Carolina may one day reflect the way companies routinely train their employees. Jonathan Crumpler, with Western Piedmont Community College in Morganton, N.C., and Tom Wright, of Drop Punk LLC and lead developer with the Textile Innovation Engine, presented their work at the Emerging Technologies Conference.
“This is going to be an extremely exciting, transformative time period for this type of training,” Crumpler says.
Crumpler oversees three digital media creation degree programs that provide training for local college students, and Wright has more than two decades of experience in the film and game industry. They provided background on the project, showed
a video of the system and gave a live demo.
AR differs from virtual reality (VR) in that, in augmented reality, the person wearing the headset sees the digital “universe” overlaid on their actual environment, which is less disorienting for the wearer and less likely to cause motion sickness than VR, where the entire environment is digitally created and immersive.
By using photogrammetry and a specific, large language model—for example, a machine’s entire operating manual—an AR program can represent exactly what the employee is working with.
A system like this could reduce employee training time needed by months. Further, the shop floor could be replicated in a conference room and avoid taking machines (and other employees) out of service for training.
“You can break anything in here [a virtual shop floor] because it’s all virtual,” Wright says.
Funding for years three through five of the project were expected to be announced in early 2026.
Also working in this sphere is the Manufacturing Solutions Center at Catawba Valley Community College, which, with Analog Digital Systems, has created the Thread-X training platform using AR and AI for training and equipment troubleshooting.
Janet Preus is senior editor of Textile Technology Source and can be reached at janet.preus@textiles.org. Cathy Jones is senior editor of Specialty Fabrics Review and can be reached at cathy.jones@textiles.org.