How long can Google's smart interactive fabric last?

Google uses a strong robotic arm to test whether its interactive smart fabric is durable enough. Developed by Google's R&D department, the fabric's ultimate goal is to make gestures and tactile recognition for any textile, such as a jacket or teddy bear.

The "Project Jacquard", which was released last spring, uses a traditional sewing process to woven a conductive yarn mesh into a special fabric. Project researchers hope that the fabric will be connected to some electronic components to create cheap and reliable "smart" clothing, furniture, toys, or any fabric-covered item.

Conductive textile fabrics are no longer new, but most of the conductive fabrics are used only for fitness apparel or fashion trends. So before making this conductive fabric into a regular shirt or jeans, the researchers of the Loom Project wanted to first determine how long the fabric would last and how well the fabric could recognize gestures.

The “looms project” fabric with human-computer interaction can be connected to small electronic components. The idea behind this goal is that when you make gestures on this fabric, these gestures are transmitted wirelessly to your phone or other electronic device.

The research team will present their research papers at a human-computer interaction meeting in May this year. In this paper, they describe how to use a robotic arm (from the industrial robot manufacturer KUKA robot) to repeatedly slap through the block of smart fabric. The fabric is placed on a "flexible sponge foam that is closest to the flexible body."

After about 10 hours and 12,000 robotic arms, the researchers of the Weaving Machine Program came to the conclusion that assuming that the consumer made 200 strokes a day, the life of the smart interactive fabric they created was about three years. Zero 200 days. The researchers mentioned that at this frequency of use, the correct rate of gesture recognition for this fabric is slightly higher than 95%, and the surface of the fabric is not significantly damaged.

The researchers said that they then conducted another 30,000 tests on the same fabric, and the gesture recognition rate was still above 95%.

Unfortunately, in actual use, the results are not satisfactory. The researchers mentioned that in another experiment, they sewed several interactive fabrics onto the sleeves of a jacket and allowed dozens of people to stand in three positions: standing, walking and sitting. Make three gestures on the block fabric (left slide, right slide and lock). Gesture recognition is not easy in this situation, which is closer to the daily use of consumers: the total recognition rate is only about 77%.

Ivan Poupvrev, the head of the Loom Project and co-author of the article, mentioned that in the recent work, the recognition rate of this fabric has been very high. Great improvement.

This piece of fabric grid shows how Google's "weaving machine project" sews conductive yarns together with ordinary yarns, which can then be attached to electronic components.

Researchers using fabric sensors to help people with disabilities interact with electronic products through gestures, University of Maryland assistant professor Ryan Robucci commented that it is very difficult to implement gesture recognition on fabrics, mainly because people and fabrics may move. At the same time, the difference between the human arm and the mechanical arm is that a person cannot always make the correct gesture.

So far, no products have been included in the “Loom Project” fabrics. Despite this, it is reported that Google's project partner, clothing manufacturer Levi Strauss, plans to release jeans with smart fabrics this spring and release more of the same jeans this fall.