BeBop Smart Fabric Sensor Honored

BeBop Sensors, Inc., a leader in smart fabric sensor technology, received the 2015 Frost & Sullivan North American Technology Innovation Award for its fabric sensor technology. Embedded fabric sensors are an emerging field with great potential in various industries, such as wearables, sports, healthcare, automotive and manufacturing.
 
“We’re very pleased to be recognized by Frost & Sullivan for our advanced position in the emerging smart fabric sensor market,” said BeBop CEO Keith McMillen. “Turning concepts into shipping product is the undoing for many startups. We are unique to have so many years of experience in providing robust solutions and feel this advantage will be seen in every sensor we make.”
 
BeBop Sensors designs and manufactures custom smart fabric solutions for OEMs. Since launching in Q4 2014, BeBop has completed 14 new sensors for OEM solutions in numerous fields. BeBop Sensors uses a proprietary Monolithic Fabric Sensor Technology that integrates all of the sensors, traces and electronics into a single piece of fabric. This approach affords greater sensitivity, resolution, range of deployment and fantastic robustness with diminutive size.

Implemented differently than other wearables that measure physiology (EKG, EMG), BeBop measures physicality.  BeBop technology senses and displays pressure, XY location, bend, motion, rotation, angle and torsion.
 
Shipping now, BeBop’s sensor technology is based on smart fabric technology that has been under development for six years.  BeBop’s core sensor technology was originally deployed by Keith McMillen Instruments (KMI), which now has over two million smart fabric sensors in regular daily use in its musical instrument products. BeBop Sensors was spun out of KMI last year to take advantage of the growing need for practical fabric sensors with a proven record in design, manufacture and performance.
 
BeBop has now developed a prototype “smart tire” that can sense the road surface, tire profile and detailed information about the contact patch – the all-important hand-sized area where the rubber literally meets the road.
 
Other applications for the versatile smart fabrics include detailed sensing of bodily motion. A first generation prototype of an all fabric data glove provides information of finger flexing and abduction from 14 fabric sensors. Combined with BeBop’s previously announced data insole, a sophisticated VR sensing system for locomotion and manipulation is available to certain OEMs. The Monolithic Fabric Sensor Technology can be used to produce sensors that are priced low enough to be considered disposable by medical and industrial standards.
 
A simple single layer fabric sensor can map pressures from complex objects in real time. Applications for pressure maps are numerous, ranging from smart chairs that correct posture to sheets for hospital beds that track patient handling.