Last week, at its annual developer’s conference I/O 2015 in San Francisco, Google announced partnership with the American denim and casual wear company Levi Strauss on the development of touch-sensitive, connected textiles, known as Project Jacquard.
The smart fabric is woven with conductive yarns spun from wires and materials like cotton or polyester. These wires are to pass the signals to sensor embedded in buttons of the clothing made of this fabric— and they pass along the impulse to the wearer’s smartphone, tablet or smart watch.
«The idea that Jacquard is an interface blended into the clothing that we’re wearing has implications in the way you would use sensors, products, applications and anything that we do with our technology,» said Joao Wilbert, creative technologist of Google Creative Lab in London, Tech Times reports.
The tech-y collection powered by Google and branded by Levi’s will be positioned as a smart and functional fashion that follows the emerging trend of ‘no-interface’ interfaces—now wearable.
Ivan Poupyrev, Project Jacqard founder, Google ATAP disivion, and Shisho Fukuhara, Textile Development and Partnership Lead at Project Jacqard, talk about the idea of the project in detail.