Sunday, May 31, 2015

Smart fabric

Eric Limer reports at Popular Mechanics,
Electronics don't have to be rigid chunks of circuit board encased in plastic or metal. They can also blend in seamlessly with the world around you. And, as Google's new Project Jacquard shows, they can also be woven directly into your clothes.

Project Jacquard comes from Google's Advanced Technology and Projects lab, one of the many wings of the tech giant devoted to doing really crazy stuff. But at its core, Jacquard is actually very simple; it's just conductive thread. That, in turn, can be used to turn jeans into a touch-based controller.

The conductive thread Google has developed is not at all rigid, or even metal. In fact, it can be woven into clothes so seamlessly that you won't even notice its there. Google, and fashion designer partners, have been working with designs that hide the touch-sensitive material as well as ones that subtly highlight it for the user. The actual brains behind the controller—the chips and other circuitry—are a little bit more noticeable but Google's been working to get those pieces down to the size of buttons.

It's definitely a neat idea, but what makes it particularly exciting is that it's actually feasible on a large scale. Google has taken pains to make sure this conductive thread is not particularly expensive. Even better, it doesn't even take any special sort of machine to do it; this works with the traditional looms that are already in use all over the world. But to really top it off, on stage at Google I/O today, Levi's announced it will be partnering with Google to put the tech to use. This stuff is coming.


Read more here.

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