Like everyone who’s ever watched Tron, I’ve long had a vision for embedding lighting into jogging and biking clothes. But the right tech pieces to make it practical, effective and fashionable were never really available until recently. Now with 2023 era LED, batteries and control tech, a bunch of small nagging problems can be eliminated, opening up new possibilities in wearable lighting.

I joined Angela Chang, a former classmate from the MIT Media Lab, and a team of folks entering the TechFashion Design Challenge 2023 via www.hackster.io , and helped the team by producing a few concept slides to show how fashionable we can make embedded safety lighting! If you’re part of the Hackster community, please vote for our Reactive Safety Vest project!
Below are the slides and below that is the basic text I drafted for the future vision section.

Future Vision – Technical Solutions

We realize that the integration of the lighting and electronics into a washable, durable piece of all-weather clothing will be the most difficult aspect of the project.

We have two conceptual approaches to integrating the lighting system into the clothing:

First, we have a concept for an edge-lit lightguide plate made of flexible, clear polymer. This material will be lasercut to any range of creative graphic patterns. It will be laser etched to properly extract the lighting uniformly across the width and length of the lightguide.  The lightguide plate will be adhered to a retroreflector base material that is lasercut to match the profile, but extend beyond the lightguide to maximum apparent brightness. This lightguide will wrap around the shoulders and terminate in a hidden internal breast pocket, where it will mate with a small, thin LED + battery unit. The LEDs will edge light the lightguide plate.

Second, we could alternatively use modern ultra-narrow LED flex strips with continuous COB configuration of the phosphor. These LED flex strips will be sandwiched on a retroreflector substrate and weather-sealed under a light diffusion medium. Wiring will terminate the strips to the small, discrete batter + control pack, using something akin to a “mag safe” connector.

The solar PV cells can be segmented for flexibility and completely encapsulated in optically clear silicon for a “soft touch” feeling.  Thin, fibrous “woven” PV strips might  also be explored in the future for an even softer, more conforming solution.

The batter pack and electronics will be completely encapsulated, perhaps in a soft, ultra-thin silicon pouch. Using modern Li-Po batteries, we can make this pouch mere millimeters thick for an unobtrusive placement in the garment. Using wireless charging and wireless connectivity and lightguide coupling, we can completely seal the enclosure with zero points of possible water ingress.

Future Vision – Design

Our solution could be integrated into a variety of garment styles to cover a range of weather conditions, types of sports, and aesthetic options. Our solution could be incorporated into fashions ranging from soft-shell jackets to reflective mylar shells to open air mesh pieces.

If we pursue the lasercut light guide approach, a wide variety of graphic patterns could be incorporated, ranging from glowing tribal tattoos, Voronoi patterns, tessellated geometries, etc. If we pursue the LED flexstrip approach, then bold lines of light could incorporated in a variety of fashionable approaches.

But overall, we hope to forever banish the tradeoff between being safe in dark conditions and looking “cool” while doing it.  The technologies available to us have finally caught up to the vision of movies like Tron: We hope to finally set a new trend in stylish illuminated athletic clothing.