Apple, Boeing And Harvard Part Of US Wearable Tech Project

US defense secretary announced $75 million funding to help a consortium of 162 companies to develop wearable technology to be worn by soldiers or molded onto the skin of an aircraft.

Ashton Carter speaking at NASA’s Ames Research Center Friday said, “Funding for the Obama administration's newest manufacturing institute would go to the FlexTech Alliance, a consortium of 162 companies, universities and other groups, from Boeing, Apple and Harvard, to Advantest Akron Polymer Systems and Kalamazoo Valley Community College.”

The group is expected to develop and manufacture flexible hybrid electronics that can be embedded with sensors and can be bent, twisted, stretched to be able to fit on an aircraft or other platform that will use the tech.

"This is an emerging technology that takes advanced flexible materials for circuits, communications, sensors and power and combines them with thinned silicon chips to ultimately produce the next generation of electronic products," Carter said.

The funding will be raised to $171 million by the end of five year. The USAF research laboratory will be managing the consortium and will fund $90 million. Other funds will be chipped in from local governments.

"I've been pushing the Pentagon to think outside our five-sided box and invest in innovation here in Silicon Valley and in tech communities across the country," Carter said.

The Flexible Hybrid Electronics Manufacturing Innovation Hub will be based in San Jose, and is the seventh of nine such institutes planned by the Obama administration in an effort to revitalize the US manufacturing base.