Zagreb, Croatia, Oct. 2-- Want a carpet that knows where you're going at night or alerts you to burglars while you're away? Or a suit that helps you fight heat and cold and measures your pulse and heartbeat? Read on.
Croatia's impoverished textile sector, unable to compete with cheap labor from Eastern Europe and Asia, has turned to high-tech inventions to restore its glory.
Once the number one exporter with over 100,000 employees, the textile industry in this former Yugoslav republic of 4.4 million was destroyed by corrupt privatisation and mismanagement in the 1990s and now employs only about 40,000.
To reverse that trend, the Zagreb Textile Faculty has started two projects, 'the intelligent carpet' and 'smart clothes'. Both are near completion and have recently been registered in the local patent bureau.
"If we stand no chance of making profit by sewing ordinary clothes, while other countries can, our future lies in complex, high-quality products," Dubravko Rogale, the faculty's dean and head of the project, told Reuters in an interview this week.
He said the textile industry in Croatia had several advantages--its proximity to Western Europe and "top class technology and work force".
"We aim to make sophisticated products that rival countries cannot. That is how we can make profit and save this industry, which is important because it employs mostly people with lower education and women," Rogale said.
The carpet, produced in cooperation with carpet maker Regeneracija Zabok, will be presented at a world carpet fair in Hanover later this year. "That's where we'll see how the market reacts," Rogale said.
The carpet is equipped with invisible electronic sensors which light up when someone steps on it. It can be used, for example, to show emergency exits in hotels during fires.
With different programming, it can register if someone--a sick or elderly person living alone--falls and remains on the floor, in which case the carpet calls paramedics, he said.
"In a house, the carpet can recognise different family members, figure out where they usually go at night, so it can light up and show the way to the bathroom, for example. Or you can use it as an alarm--if someone walks on it while you are on holiday," Rogale said.
The smart suit or "a wearable computer" is a concept already researched by the U.S. military to improve combat readiness and communication. It can also be used to measure pulse and heartbeat of professional athletes or newborn babies, reducing the chances of the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, Rogale said.
In Croatia, it will start out as protective clothing, made by local textile firm Siscia.
"It will have sensors gauging body and outside temperature, with inflatable airbags inside. If the temperature drops, airbags will inflate and increase thermal insulation. Should it get warm, airbags can let out the air, with a cooling effect."
The clothes, made with state-of-the-art technology including "tailoring with lasers and sewing with ultrasound", were intended for outdoor workers operating in weather conditions that can quickly deteriorate, he said.
