Multitouch Clothing Inbound, Researchers Make Capacitive Touch Textiles

It is a well known fact that researchers have been trying to get touch input into just about any electronic imaginable, and it seems that they are now crossing boundaries and headed to other domains, like that of clothing.

For years many research groups have been experimenting with bendable screens and special touch-enabled surfaces.

There have even been experiments with using cameras and the like to simulate touch support, so as to make any surface interactive.

Nevertheless, touch technology today is more or less restricted to displays, usually LCDs or e-paper, with just a few projects (that have yet to be adopted by any actual application) crossing the boundaries to any extent.

Now, however, it is revealed that a certain team of Japanese researchers has succeeded in implementing touch input into textiles, of all things.

The AIST's Integrated Microsystems Research Center is the group that used, on nylon fibers, dye-coating to form a continuous layer of organic conductive polymer.

Basically, they intend to make wearable touch-enabled textiles, so that clothing may, eventually, become interactive in a whole new way.

"Ultimately, we aim to make items that can be worn. We want to use them to sense what's happening around the wearer, and communicate information,” quotes the report.

“But I think the first application for this technology will be in healthcare; it could be used in bed-sheets. Patients confined to bed experience various problems, such as getting pressure sores or falling out of bed, but these sensors could help.”

“They could also be very effective in rehabilitation, by sensing how people walk. So we hope the first applications for the sensors will be in areas like that."

A demo was made at Nano Tech 2011. A touch sensor based on measuring static capacitance between the sheet and the user was shown successfully allowing one to input text.