How would you feel if the passwords you use were stored on your t-shirt? A dress with an electronic screen you can control via your smartphone? Yes there are clothes made with photoluminescent yarns and integrated technology eye tracking powered by the world's gaze!
We are talking about smart fabrics. The following video presents you with a fabric that changes structure via tiny electric motors activated by light sensors sewn throughout the garment.
What about the passwords mentioned in the title?
Researchers from the University of Washington announced last week that they have successfully manipulated the polarity of magnetized fabric. Using conductive yarn they created fabrics and fashion accessories that can store digital data or optical information.
As the researchers say, the conductive yarn is already in use to create garments or accessories that light up or communicate.
However, as mentioned above, UW researchers have realized that the ferromagnetic properties of the yarn could also be used to store data or visual information. So letters or numbers can be read by a magnetometer: a cheap instrument that measures the direction and strength of magnetic fields and is embedded in most smartphones.
So think about passwords that can be stored on a comeye of conductive fabric sewn into a blouse. It is one of the many projects mentioned by the researchers.
With the use of conductive yarn, the integration of passwords can be done without electronic systems or sensors. Shyam Gollakota, associate professor of UW's School of Computer Science and Engineering Paul G. Allen, says:
We use something that already exists on a smartphone and uses almost no energy, so the cost of reading this type of data is negligible.
A paper (PDF) for the data weaving experiment, entitled “Data Storage and Interaction using Magnetized Fabric”, was presented last week in Quebec, at Association for Computing Machinery's User Interface Software and Technology Symposium.
The researchers used everyday sewing machines to enrich regular fabric with yarn, creating "patches" that could be turned into garlands, belts, bracelets, necklaces or anywhere else.
Watch the video
