Google Partners With Levi Strauss To Make Smart Clothes

Tech giant Google will collaborate with jeans-maker Levi Strauss to create "smart clothes" for people.

The Next Digit revealed that during the Google I/O 2015, Google's Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) announced that it will partner with Levi Strauss for "Project Jacquar". The activity aims to create smart clothing with touchpad capabilities, which means that garments will become interactive, featuring gestures like swiping and tapping that will forward signals to smartphones and devices to perform various functions. Gestures can be used to control the device, send text messages and make phone calls.

"When it came to choosing a first partner for Project Jaquard, the Levi's brand was a natural fit," said Ivan Poupyrev, Google ATAP's technical project lead.

Project Jacquard features special threads that can be woven into various kinds of fabric. These can be made to blend with the fabric or to be visually attractive, depending on the designer. Conductivity can be set only to certain parts of fabric or it may be placed on the entire cloth. Any type of fabric, such as suits, dresses and carpets, can be used and feature touchpad capabilities. The conductive yarn will be linked to small circuits which include miniaturized electronics that can use algorithms and identify gestures, based on the same report by The Next Digit.

GizMag stated that Jacquard yarns are touch-sensitive and make use of thin metallic alloys together with regular yarn from cotton or silk materials. At the Google I/O 2015, a demo was done to show how the fabric can control lights. Tapping the clothing easily turned the lights on and off. Swiping the fabric would change the color and brightness respectively. Google's goal is to link the wearable material to virtually any device available.

"We are enabling interactive textiles," said Emre Karagozler of Google ATAP in a report by CTV News.

"We do it by weaving conductive threads into fabric. It is stretchable; it is washable," Karagozler said as people controlled lights or computer screens with finger strokes on a blue cloth covering a table in the display area behind him," Karagozler explained.

"In our hyper-digital world, people constantly struggle to be physically present in their environment while maintaining a digital connection. The work that Google and Levi's are embarking upon with Project Jacquard delivers an entirely new value to consumers with apparel that is emotional, aspirational and functional," said Paul Dillinger, Levi Straus's head of global product innovation.