CAMBRIDGE, MASS. (WHDH) - A research team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is working with the Rhode Island School of Design to develop an acoustic fabric prototype that can listen and record sound.
The fabric can be inserted into clothes to monitor heart rate and respiration. It can even help with monitoring unborn babies during pregnancy.
Yoel Fink, a researcher at MIT, said this is all possible due to fibers found in the ear.
“That eardrum is made of fibers and the very end of the eardrum is where those waves turned into electrical signals are also fibers,” said Fink. “We take these insides from the ear and created an artificial ear which is in the form of the fabric and that’s what I’m going to be holding up here is the result of this research.”
The fabric then records and stores the sound wave data which can be transmitted to a phone.
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