We have ended up pigeonholing smartwatches and headphones into the category of wearable electronics, but this term was reserved until recently for a much more revolutionary idea: garments indistinguishable from those we wear every day, but capable of surprising us with functions. advanced thanks to the use of smart fibers and processors.
What exactly happened to this dream? As has happened countless times in the world of technology – just think of virtual reality or augmented reality – it fell victim to high expectations.
After an initial wave of enthusiasm, the idea of such textiles came to inhabit what is often known as the valley of disillusionment , a period of inactivity in which interest in advances wanes, investment dries up, and the entire industry begins to look in another direction. It is not permanent. In general, sooner or later, the ideas parked in this valley are revisited and regain appeal. What is known as the rediscovery curve arrives, and with luck, the companies and innovators behind the projects manage to create a stable market around their products.
This is what happened with virtual reality when Oculus or PlayStation decided to bet on that technology again, and everything indicates that the process is being repeated with smart clothing, authentic wearable electronics.
If we are to find someone to blame for that first wave of enthusiasm, we have to talk about Project Jacquard, part of Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group. Google (or rather, Alphabet, the multinational of which it is the first subsidiary) has two divisions focused on developing inventions: on the one hand, there is Google X, which works on far-reaching ideas and to some extent theoretical or still on growth. ATAP, on the other hand, works more like an incubator: it tends to dedicate itself to concepts that already exist functional prototypes and that allow a clear vision on the possibilities of making them profitable.
In 2015, this latest division of Google showed the first prototype of a smart fabric: a small piece of fabric with integrated conductive fibers with which it would be possible to create garments capable of responding to touch , or equipped with advanced sensors with which to measure different parameters. health or exercise. Its name was a tribute to the Jacquard loom, a machine invented by the French weaver and merchant Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1804, and which was the first programmable punched card loom. In a way, these types of machines can be considered as the forerunners of today’s computers, despite the obvious differences. In that 2015, Google not only presented such a prototype; It also announced an agreement with the clothing company Levi’s to create the first smart jacket made with this fabric, which had the advantage of being able to undergo the same industrial processes as any other fabric.
The result took a long time to materialize. Levi’s didn’t release its jacket until 2017, which was met with skepticism. The garment made it possible to control some functions of a paired smartphone by simply sliding the fingers down the sleeve, but the response was not always good and the user experience ended up being confusing. While the idea of a touchpad integrated into the sleeve of clothing is appealing, it doesn’t solve a big problem. After all, it is not so difficult to take your phone out of your pocket or use a voice assistant in the situations that Levi’s and Google raised. It was clear that the first attempt to create a smart garment with a potentially high demand had failed , and Google began to divert its attention to other businesses.
Last year, however, Project Jacquard showed signs of life again, albeit with the misfortune of doing so just before the pandemic. In March 2020, it announced together with Adidas and the video game company EA Sports the launch of a shoe sole capable of using machine learning and artificial intelligence to detect the force and direction of a kick. Designed to be integrated into football boots, it was synchronized with the mobile game FIFA Mobile, and rewarded users with better virtual players if their movements proved to be good kickers in real life. It was a bold idea that came at the worst time. Within a month of appearing in the market, the restrictions on movement ended with going out to the streets to play soccer with friends. A year later, it remains a difficult proposition.
The same can be said for the second version of the Levi’s jacket, also planned for 2020 and which has been left in limbo now that there is little reason to buy any garment that does not fulfill the function of being comfortable at home and looking passable in video calls.
However, a novel project from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) suggests that Google may be on the right track, and that once we emerge from the pandemic, smart clothing could once again capture the imaginations of people with new and interesting applications. In an article published in Nature Electronics, a team from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) has presented a new type of fiber capable of detecting pressure and converting it into electrical signals that can be sent to a processor. With these fibers, which are interwoven with cotton and other materials, it is possible to create garments that recognize the movements of the wearer. It is a perfect complement to Jacquard fabrics, which although they are conductive, are intended to function only as a kind of touch panel integrated into clothing.
This MIT invention goes one step further and transforms these surfaces into sensors that interpret motion. A shirt, socks or pants would notice if the wearer is walking or sitting, which would allow the user to offer actions on the touch surface appropriate to the context. As Wan Shou, one of the researchers involved, says, “This opens up exciting new application areas for researchers to explore for years to come.” Let’s imagine: in the near future, sportswear made with this technology could tell us if we are doing a certain exercise well. The military uniforms that had it would detect the state of health of a soldier with enough precision, and the robots would acquire a sense of touch if we put special gloves on their extremities.
These are possibilities that will gain interest as we move towards a tomorrow in which we will be less aware of the mobile screen and more of more discreet products, such as glasses with augmented reality and headphones with virtual assistants. We will no longer carry the computer in our pockets, we will wear it.
