Google secures patent for its smart clothing technology, Jacquard

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In 2015, Google collaborated with Levi’s and came up with a smart trucker jacket that connects with a smartphone through Bluetooth. Google named this smart clothing technology, “Jacquard.”

This smart piece of clothing has electronics embedded in its cuff.

Different gestures (brush in, brush out & double tap) on the jacket’s cuff can be used for different actions like playing/pausing audio, playing next file etc.

The jacket’s cuff gives haptic feedback to let you know about many things. For example, the cuff lightly vibrates during an incoming call or message.

The smart jacket can also notify via haptic feedback when your Lyft or Uber has arrived.

Google was granted a patent yesterday for the haptic feedback mechanism of Jacquard, its smart clothing technology. The patent was granted by the United States Patent & Trademark Office.

This patent was initially filed by Google in June 2017. The patent application was published in October 2018.

Google summarizes its invention as,

“A wearable interactive garment (e.g., a jacket, shirt, or pants) may include various sensors that can sense user interactions in the form of single or multi-touch-input (e.g., gestures). A haptic feedback mechanism is integrated within the interactive garment and includes a vibration source (e.g., a vibration motor) and a mechanical transmission structure coupled to the vibration source. A controller is configured to control the haptic feedback mechanism to provide haptic feedback by causing the vibration source to distribute vibration to multiple vibration points within the transmission structure.”

Google also notes in the patent that, “the haptic feedback may be provided, for example, to indicate to the user that a particular user interaction with the interactive garment was detected or to provide a notification to the user.

For example, the haptic feedback mechanism may vibrate once to indicate that user input to the interactive garment has been received or recognized, and vibrate twice to indicate that a text message has been received at a smartphone paired with the interactive garment.”

Google’s Fig. 1 shown below is an illustration of a haptic feedback mechanism for an interactive garment.

Google’s Fig. 3 shown below illustrates an example of the interactive fabric

Other companies like Under Armour and Microsoft are also working on smart clothing technology.

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