Teaching AI in knitwear education, with reference to the application of artificial neural networks (ANN)

With the rapid advancements in knitwear and knitting technology, there is an increasing scope of teaching advanced concepts like Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the Knitwear curriculum. The scope of technical textiles has also increased and so has the need to develop more and more precise fabrics that meet certain parameters and needs thereby. This has resulted in the need to improve the fabric design procedures so that the final products conform to certain technical properties , like thermal conductivity, bursting strength, etc. The performance of the knitted fabrics is desired to be predictable right from the design phase, and this can be a very relevant and useful input for the future knitwear designers and technologists. Hence, knit fabric design is focusing on the control of its parameters, so that the requirements of the end use like sensory comfort, pilling control, handle, strength , etc. can be met. Since most of these parameters don't have a linear mathematical link with the properties as such, hence there has been an increasing need and use of Artificial Intelligence tools, especially the Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), so as to estimate, predict and classify various knitted fabric properties. Hence, this paper mainly reviews and talks about the various applications of ANN in knits , so that they may be incorporated into the Knitwear curriculum in the near future.