Clothes may carry a woven-in touchscreen: a Singapore prototype
National University of Singapore researchers built a sleeve that shows images, responds to touch and survives washing.
Researchers in Singapore wove a tiny screen into the fabric of a sleeve. It reacts when you touch it and survives washing. It is still a lab test and is not for sale.
Hype check
Louder than it deserves. The real change is smaller.
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Why it matters
Clothes could one day show notifications and health alerts. For now it is a low-resolution research prototype.
Watch: a nice example of clothing becoming a screen.
The details
- The fibers are flexible plastic threads about 1 mm thick and 10 m long, with LEDs, wires and a touch sensor.
- The demo sleeve has 54 fibers of 96 LEDs each, forming a 96×54-pixel screen of 168×105 mm.
- It runs at 30 frames per second and includes a microphone, a speaker and motion, temperature and light sensors.
- No substantial decline appeared after 50 washes and 1,000 bending cycles.
- Resolution is low and the thread is fairly thick; no price or product date was given. The work appeared in Nature.
Receipts
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