‘Smart’ face masks offer built-in assistants and customisable LED lighting

Few products have risen from relative obscurity to ubiquity as quickly as face masks, Joseph Flaig, writing for the Institution of Mechanical Engineers at IMechE.org, observes. As the airborne threat of Covid-19 gradually became clear, many of us went from mask-free to wearing disposable or homemade masks, before settling on washable, reusable products.  Now, however, even those might seem insufficient. Faced with the threat of highly infectious new variants of the virus, medical-grade N95 masks might appeal. And there is now a raft of ‘smart’ alternatives. Many of these were showcased at CES 2021, the annual celebration of cutting-edge…