Metallisation of Textiles to make Urban living for Older people more Independent Fashionable - MATUROLIFE

With an increase in the ageing population across Europe there is a huge and growing demand for assistive technology (AT). However, such devices are rarely designed with fashion, aesthetics or discretion in mind marking the user out as vulnerable and ‘older’. Obtaining the opinions and desires of older people will therefore be central to the MATUROLIFE project, which will utilise a design management approach embedding creative artists and designers and their methods throughout the project. Product development will ensure embedding of emotional design principles and adoption of a co-creation approach. Thus, older people will influence the design of AT ensuring it is functional, meets their needs and requirements and is aesthetically pleasing and desirable. Electronic or ‘smart’ textiles represent a potentially high growth area for electronics manufacturing. There are a number of ways to make textiles and fabrics conductive including knitting or weaving in conductive threads or metal wires or printing conductive inks onto such materials. However, it is arguable whether such an approach can produce electronics that are truly integrated into the textile as conventional metal wires change the feel and drape of the material and make them stiff and less flexible. Simply attaching electronic components to a textile makes them heavier and uncomfortable to wear. MATUROLIFE takes an alternative approach to introducing electronic connectivity to textiles and fabrics. Catalysts will be developed that can be selectively deposited onto textiles and fabrics enabling subsequent metallisation processes to fully coat fibres within the textiles with copper thus producing a truly multi-functional material. The feel and drape of the textile is maintained with very little increase in weight whilst the material can still be bent and twisted in the same way as a conventional textile.

The main goal of the MATUROLIFE project is to place creative and artistic design at the heart of innovative travel and use them to create three AT (Assistive Technology) prototypes that will ensure that the lives of older people in an urban environment will be easier, more independent, fashionable and comfortable . The number of elderly people in urban areas is increasing, so how to ensure the safety of these people and thus their independent life is becoming a key European social challenge. This is feasible using assistive technology as proposed in the project, e.g. by wearing an alarm and tracking device around the arm or neck that alerts caregivers to falls or the location of persons should they become lost. However, such technology is often unattractive and stigmatizing to the user, causing their dissatisfaction and rejection. The project is based on existing technological achievements in the field of materials, such as an innovative selective metallization process using nanotechnology, electrochemistry and materials science, with the aim of coating textile fibers and textiles with metal, which ensures conductivity and electronic connectivity. In this way, a better integration of electronics and sensors into fabrics and other textiles will be enabled, which will be the basis for fashion designers and artists to create AT products for older people, which will not only be functional, but more desirable and attractive, as well as lighter and more comfortable. The consortium includes groups of social stakeholders representing end-users (i.e. older people) who will participate significantly in the design process as well as in providing feedback and guiding the development of AT prototypes, which will significantly contribute to end-user acceptance of the product. With the developed prototypes, we will confirm the set concept and thereby evaluate the industrial applicability of the selective metallization process. The enabling technology that will be created as a result of the project will benefit all SMEs in the consortium, especially those in the creative sector, who expect sustainable growth and job creation as a direct result of the project.