Last year Patently Mobile posted an extensive patent report titled "Google invents a Gesture Controls System for Future Smart Garments." Last week the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Google that reveals their continual work on this project.

The 2016 Google patent really laid out a wide overview. In this week's patent filing revelations, Google covers the interactive garment, materials for the garment, a specialized connector and more.

Technically, Google states that their invention covers "techniques using, and objects embodying, an interactive fabric which is configured to sense user interactions in the form of single or multi-touch-input (e.g., gestures). The interactive fabric may be integrated into a wearable interactive garment (e.g., a jacket, shirt, or pants) that is coupled (e.g., via a wired or wireless connection) to a gesture manager.

The gesture manager may be implemented at the interactive garment, or remote from the interactive garment, such as at a computing device that is wirelessly paired with the interactive garment and/or at a remote cloud based service.

Generally, the gesture manager recognizes user interactions to the interactive fabric, and in response, triggers various different types of functionality, such as answering a phone call, sending a text message, creating a journal entry, and so forth.

Notably the user is able to trigger various different types of functionalities through interactions with the interactive garment, such as by touching or swiping the user's shirt sleeve. In addition, by enabling the triggering of functionality through interactions with a wearable garment, instead of a device, the user does not need to fiddle around with the user interface of a smartwatch or smartphone in order trigger a functionality. In fact, the user may be able to provide the gesture to the interactive garment without even looking at the garment. In addition, a simple gesture to a garment is discreet and thus enables the user to trigger functionalities in a crowded setting without the need to take out their smartphone or other electronic device.

The interactive garment may include one or more output devices, such as light sources (e.g., LEDs), speakers, displays (e.g., flexible organic displays), shape changing materials, or vibration components. These output devices can be controlled to provide feedback to the user, such as by providing a visual, audio, and/or haptic output (e.g., flashing light, beeping, or vibrating) indicating that a particular user interaction was detected. In addition, the output devices may be controlled to provide a notification to the user (e.g., that a text message has been received at a smartphone paired with the interactive garment), such as by flashing, vibrating, or beeping.

To enable the interactive fabric to sense multi-touch-input, a conductive thread is integrated with the fabric (e.g., by weaving the conductive thread into the fabric or by embroidering the conductive thread onto the fabric) to form a capacitive touch sensor that can detect touch-input. Sensing circuitry, which is coupled to the conductive thread, is configured to process the touch-input to generate touch data that is useable to initiate functionality at the interactive garment or at various remote devices.

Conductive Thread: Project Jacquard

The conductive thread, which is further explained in Google's video about Project Jacquard above, may be custom made using a modified thread or yarn spinning process in which the threads are spun using multiple conductive wires and typical yarn materials such as cotton, polyester, and silk. In this way, conventional machinery can be used to create the conductive threads, which makes the conductive thread easy to manufacture. The resulting conductive threads can have variable thicknesses, color, and feel, and can be made to look indistinguishable from ordinary yarns. The conductive threads have enough conductivity to enable single-ended capacitive sensing over a range of a few meters and enough mechanical strength to survive through fabric weaving processes as well as typical use of the interactive garment by users.

In many cases, it may be difficult to integrate bulky electronic components (e.g., batteries, microprocessors, wireless units, and sensors) into the interactive garment, such as a shirt, coat, or pair of pants. Furthermore, connecting such electronic components to a garment may cause issues with durability since garments are often washed. Thus, in one or more implementations, the interactive garment is implemented with multiple electronics modules. In some cases, the interactive garment includes at least an internal electronics module containing a first subset of electronic components for the interactive garment, and an external electronics module containing a second subset of electronic components for the interactive garment. As described herein, the internal electronics module may be physically and permanently coupled to the interactive garment, whereas the external electronics module may be removably coupled to the interactive garment. Thus, instead of integrating all of the electronics within the interactive garment, at least some of the electronics are placed in the external electronics module.

The internal electronics module may contain the sensing circuitry that is directly coupled to the conductive threads to enable the detection of touch-input to the interactive fabric, while the external electronics module contains electronic components that are needed to process and communicate the touch-input data, such as a microprocessor, a power source, a network interface, and so forth.

The interactive garment may further include a communication interface configured to enable communication between the internal electronics module and the external electronics module. In some implementations, the communication interface may be implemented as a connector that connects the electronic components in the external electronics module to the electronic components in the internal electronics module to enable the transfer of power and data between the modules.

For example, the connector (as illustrated below) may be implemented utilizing pogo pins and may be modeled after a snap button. The connector may include a connector plug and a connector receptacle. For example, the connector plug may be implemented at the external electronics module and is configured to connect to the connector receptacle, which may be implemented at the interactive garment.

Thus, while the electronic components are separated into multiple different modules, the communication interface enables the system to function as a single unit. For example, the power source contained within the external electronics module may transfer power, via the communication interface, to the sensing circuitry of the internal electronics module to enable the sensing circuitry to detect touch-input to the conductive thread. When touch-input is detected by the sensing circuitry of the internal electronics module, data representative of the touch-input may be communicated, via the communication interface, to the microprocessor contained within the external electronics module. The microprocessor may then analyze the touch-input data to generate one or more control signals, which may then be communicated to a remote computing device (e.g., a smart phone) via the network interface to cause the computing device to initiate a particular functionality.

Separating the electronics of the interactive garment into multiple different modules provides a variety of different benefits. For example, the system design enables interoperability and customization because the external electronics module can be detached from the interactive garment, and then attached to a different interactive garment to carry over some of the functions and properties, such as user specific settings. Additionally, by separating the garment embedded electronics from the external electronics module, users, designers and companies are able to design the external electronics modules in the form factor, mechanical, material and surface finish qualities that are specific to the application or the user. For example, a leather jacket might have an external electronics module that is leather, and in the form of a strap that matches a certain jacket style, or allows a flexible form factor that would have been hard to achieve inside a garment.

Furthermore, separating the electronics enable broken parts to be easily replaced or serviced without the need to access the entire interactive garment. For example, the external electronics module can be shipped to a repair service, or a new external electronics module can be purchased without the need to purchase a new interactive garment. In addition, separating the electronic components into internal and external modules ensures that parts such as batteries are not exposes to washing cycles that a typical garment would go through. For example, the external electronics module, which may include the battery, can easily be removed from the interactive garment before washing the interactive garment. Furthermore, by separating parts, the manufacturing challenges are significantly simplified and certification processes (such as FCC certification for RF transmission units) can be handled over the part in question, thereby reducing the complexity.

Google filed their patent application back in Q2 2017. Considering that this is a patent application, the timing of such a product to market is unknown at this time.

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