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Science Technology

Eleksen Introduces Electro Fabric 120

Posted by Zonk from the batman's-cape dept.
DigitalDame2 writes "Eleksen, a small UK-based firm is introducing electronic fabric, essentially carbon-embedded nylon sandwiched between layers of nylon mesh that, when a milliamps charge is passed through it, can recognize touch, pressure and even the direction and path of a stroke. This thin, flexible, and washable fabric connects to a small 8-bit processor, which then can be connected to a standard electronic device like an iPod. Eleksen company executives said the washable fabric can also withstand extreme pressure; they've rolled a car over it without any ill effects."
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Eleksen Introduces Electro Fabric More

Eleksen Introduces Electro Fabric

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  • Tazer? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @11:11PM (#14176422) Journal
    But will the fabric short out a Tazer, thus enabling people to avoid being disabled by one?
    • It will actually help conduct electriciy, provding a much larger shock area!
      • The larger the shock area, the less strong the shock. Plus, this material will probably be limited to certain small areas for the media player controls.

    • Article text follows (Score:1, Informative)

      by akgoatley ( 787022 )
      Article text, for your convenience:

      Wearable technology is not a new idea. eVest has been producing wired jackets for years, but we have yet to see technology integrated inside the fabric that makes up the jacket--until now.

      Eleksen, a small UK-based firm is introducing electronic fabric, essentially carbon-embedded nylon sandwiched between layers of nylon mesh that, when a milliamps charge is passed through it, can recognize touch (and it's location), pressure and even the direction and path of a stroke. Thi

    • Re:Tazer? (Score:2, Funny)

      by woolio ( 927141 ) *
      Well, with the increasing frequency of taser use, perhaps they can design the jacket to get recharged from such.

    • Well, electricity follows the path of least resistance and all that. So assuming that an entire shirt was lined with this stuff, not just a patch somewhere, it would probably help. How much it helped would depend on the type of tazer (contact or wire probe) and the conductivity of this material compared to human flesh.

      On the other hand I would wonder how much this stuff heats up when you put a serious current through it. Enough to burn you, or just to burn itself out? (hope it's not too flammable...)

      -Flu

    • Wouldn't a mylar liner between the shell and the real liner on any jacket do the job? Is the rate of tazer use going up or something?

  • If this will be cheap enough... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sznupi ( 719324 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @11:14PM (#14176430) Homepage
    I reckon a lot of "amatour" robots will do one of senses much, much better...
    • Crap, is my life again at point when I'm beeing unintentionally funny? :/
    • From ElexTex technical documents:
      "This sensor [alternates] measuring X position, Y position and Z pressure. The limitation is that two simultaneous areas being pressed will be interpreted as a single press half-way between them."

      I'm not sure how useful a robot will be, even an "amatour" one, that can only detect a single point of contact. Sure, you could use several small patches of fabric in a grid arrangement to detect multiple points, but now its not really a single piece of fabric but a mangled patch-wo
      • Well, humans have very limited ability to distinguish two simultaneous touches over much of the body - on parts of the arms, for example two points as much as 20 cm apart may seem to be a single touch. The advantage of fabric sensors is that you get thousands of them with just a few electrical connections. Pressure switches have to be handled individually in design and assembly, which greatly limits their use. Also $7 for an electronic part is very expensive - that will add $15-$35 to the retail price of a

  • Careful (Score:5, Funny)

    by daeley ( 126313 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @11:17PM (#14176445) Homepage
    Eleksen company executives said the washable fabric can also withstand extreme pressure; they've rolled a car over it without any ill effects. ...with someone wearing the suit at the time? Mmmm, not so much. ;)
    • Actually, that's just about what I thought of: electro-fabric skin substitutes for prostheses. Although properly communicating such complex information to the brain might not be so cheap...

    • Steamroller-test dummy (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I beg to differ :)

      "After the test Bender complained about having a sore back but company executives attribute it to a ploy for more alcohol... Company executives said the steamroller suffered no complaints either and that she would be happy to do it again. The car was unavailable for comment at the time."

    • Do a car's wide tires even exert that much pressure? My foot's been rolled over by a minivan with no ill effects. Wearing steel toed boots at the time...

      Let's see, 4000 lb car, 250 mm wide tires, call it 10 inches, estimate 4 in out of the circumfrence are touching the ground... That's (4000 lb) / (10 x 4 x 4 in^2) = 25 psi. Not fully understanding pressure, I wonder if the correct figure is the tire inflation pressure? (which would be about 30-35 psi I think). Either way, that doesn't sound awful.

  • So what are they looking for here? Talking about iPods? They want some little patch they can put on your sleeve so you can scroll-wheel it while it's still in your pocket? Hmm. Maybe they can combine it with the next-generation Bluetooth iPod. =b

    Sounds interesting, but I'd want to see a few more compelling applications than this.

    • FTA,

      The iPod is plugged into the microcontroller, which takes the touch information on the jacket arm and interprets it for the iPod. In this incarnation, the controller is programmed to read and mimic iPod control signals, but Eleksen does have an API manufacturers can use to create other device controllers.

      The user interface of iPods are very well-designed. It would be a waste and a hassle to bypass the sleek iPod interface and control the iPod through the jacket.

      Wouldn't it be easier to just take

      • Re:So what are they looking for here? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Oliver Wendell Jones ( 158103 ) on Sunday December 04, 2005 @12:01AM (#14176587)
        The user interface of iPods are very well-designed. It would be a waste and a hassle to bypass the sleek iPod interface and control the iPod through the jacket. Wouldn't it be easier to just take out the iPod and meddle with it?

        What if you're skiing/snowboarding, for example, and wearing gloves that make your fingers 2" in diameter (and why can't someone make a pair of gloves that keeps your fingers warm but doesn't make you look like you're wearing those dorky "Hulk Hands" toys?)? In that situation, just unzipping your pocket to remove the iPod can be a challenge...

      • Safety First. (Score:3, Funny)

        by triso ( 67491 )
        Wouldn't it be easier to just take out the iPod and meddle with it?
        Not if I am driving and watching a DVD at the same time, I might drop my cell phone.

    • Applications (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Don't know about you, but I want a keyboard built into my pants connected to a tiny linux distro pumping through my video glasses with an retinal reader for a mouse. And maybe I can tie this together to pump images through the flexible screen on my t-shirt, or to program messages into my LED belt buckle.

      Add a little munifi, and I'll feel like I'm in a Cory Doctorow novel, if not the fucking Matrix.

      Any technology sufficiently integrated with style makes us indistinguishable from gods.
    • Compelling applications? Sounds to me like this could be used to make sythetic skin for prothetics and such. And with the artificial neruon they were talking about a while back, you could hook it up to the old nerves that used to go down the arm, and potentially make it feel like you had a real arm again.

      Facinating stuff.

  • Exoskeleton interface. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Sebilrazen ( 870600 ) <blahsebilrazen@blah.com> on Saturday December 03, 2005 @11:18PM (#14176449)
    Pure and simple.

    That or DDR is really going to become fanatical

  • Cut out the advert infested middlemen (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03, 2005 @11:21PM (#14176456)

    and go straight to the source
    Eleksen is the world's only supplier of integrated fabric switching and sensing
    solutions.
    http://www.eleksen.com/ [eleksen.com]

  • This should be quite interesting (Score:5, Interesting)

    by zappepcs ( 820751 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @11:23PM (#14176462) Journal
    If this works out like it seems, the sensation of touch will be a big boon to robotics for hobbyists as well as for NASA and other space going enterprises. Touch is one of those things that makes a REALLY big difference in how robots do things. Simple things like flipping a light switch or tightening a bolt use touch, and make them easily done.

    • I can think of a few other potentials, like the fabric of a chair sensing where the pressure points are and adjusting itself accordingly. I could see combining such a pressure-sense technology with a body-height cabinet for taking full-body measurements for custom clothing manufacture, and even more mundane uses like a more accurate "touch" scoring system for medieval recreationists.

      For general robotics systems I can see more safety uses than practical -- wrap the limbs of the robot in this stuff so it

      • I'm quite interested in robotics, and until there is sufficient 'touch' sensors, the safety thing is a REAL issue. I have been researching Theremin devices for that safety issue, but adding touch sensory data is a huge benefit. If such material can be combined with 'whiskers' like a cat or rat or roach has, then there are huge amounts of complex goals that can be achieved. We could spend billions of dollars putting an autonomous robot on Mars, and it might die in a day, but send a roach and in a year, there

  • so many applications (Score:2, Interesting)

    by TLouden ( 677335 )
    of course everybody is thinking they can wear their computer input device now, but what about:

    your clothing tells people to back off when they're hitting on you (you can turn it off if you'd like)

    clothing that reminds you to get off your ass and do something every once in a while (ok, so some of us could just use a timer for that, but others might be able to take advantage of it)

    [real application] hospitals could use help in remembering to shift the appendages of some patients, this could do just that.

    postu
    • ""
      clothing that reminds you to get off your ass and do something every once in a while (ok, so some of us could just use a timer for that, but others might be able to take advantage of it)
      ""

      Aye, we definately need that... perhaps with some open electrode that actually SHOCKS you if you don't heed the alarm, too... it'd be helpful for those of us who uncontrollably procrastinate!

  • Car crushing music (Score:5, Funny)

    by linuxwrangler ( 582055 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @11:25PM (#14176476)
    they've rolled a car over it without any ill effects

    So what did the I-pod select then? "Under pressure"? Something from the Crash Test Dummies?

    • Re:Car crushing music (Score:4, Funny)

      by Belseth ( 835595 ) on Sunday December 04, 2005 @12:52AM (#14176712)
      So what did the I-pod select then? "Under pressure"? Something from the Crash Test Dummies?

      Actually the Ipod called a lawyer and sent information on weight of vehicle, tire tread pattern, likely model of car and likely yearly income of the driver as well as probable outcome of a lawsuit. The legal profession has declared it the greatest advancement in personal injury cases since the police band radio.

    • > they've rolled a car over it without any ill effects

      So what did the I-pod select then? "Under pressure"? Something from the Crash Test Dummies?

      Clearly nothing from the Beastie Boys [amazon.com].
    • "So what did the I-pod select then? "Under pressure"? Something from the Crash Test Dummies?"

      The Bad Touch.

  • The Wearable Trackpad (Score:5, Funny)

    by SeaFox ( 739806 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @11:26PM (#14176479)
    So now to drag around very large images on my screen, I stroke myself!

  • ... that it is possible to make a heated [sunbeambedding.com] mattress pad [martex.com] where you can't feel the wires under your body.

    By the way, for those who aren't familiar, heated mattress pads are a lot like electric blankets. But, they can't be hogged by your MOTAS or accidentally untucked (leaving your feet cold) or kicked off. And they seem to do a more thorough job of heating since warm air rises. The wires aren't particularly annoying right now, but if they could be made imperceptible, they'd be virtually the ideal thing.

  • Wow (Score:3, Interesting)

    by XMilkProject ( 935232 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @11:35PM (#14176516) Homepage
    Well I tried to think of something negative about this, but in all honestly it seems to be just awesome!

    The company seems legitimate, and they actually have the product in use in retail products already... And they provide an API for programming the chips yourself.

    This sounds so cool, I'm going to try to have to get one of those jackets, or some sample of the system for myself!
    • Personally, I've been dying for a way to place the controls to delete my Treo address book or play porn on my iPod, right out there on my jacket. Subway rides will be so much more exciting. I just hope they distribute their security patches in stylish colors with a sewing kit.

  • Not good enough (Score:5, Funny)

    by roman_mir ( 125474 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @11:35PM (#14176518) Homepage Journal
    Eleksen company executives said the washable fabric can also withstand extreme pressure; they've rolled a car over it without any ill effects - this is unacceptable! I am not going to buy any of these products until they can withstand being rolled over by a tank. And what is it with the primitive 8 bit processor? I imagine it doesn't even need a decent fan to cool down. I demand a dual core CPU so that it will keep me warm during those long and cold Canadian winter nights. Since the batteries for such a system would have to be carried in 2 suitcases, while using the CPU at full power, I imagine it might be a good idea to add a propeller-hat [nyud.net] with a generator to the entire ensemble. But make the propeller blades bigger, so that noone will think that it is a stupid outfit and won't try to beat us up. :)
    • this is unacceptable! I am not going to buy any of these products until they can withstand being rolled over by a tank. And what is it with the primitive 8 bit processor?

      The "run over by a car" thing is actually a really, really lame demonstration. The pressure per sq. inch really isn't that great.

      Nonetheless, it's always the example that's brought up.

      • Re:Not good enough (Score:2, Insightful)

        by EvanED ( 569694 )
        The "run over by a car" thing is actually a really, really lame demonstration. The pressure per sq. inch really isn't that great. Nonetheless, it's always the example that's brought up.

        For clothes though, it probably is a perfectly acceptable test. Reason being, if something you're wearing is being run over by a car, you probably have concerns on your mind more "pressing" than what song your iPod is playing.

  • Cost? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by um_atrain ( 810963 )
    How much will this stuff cost?
    Is it a resonable production cost, eg: buying a "smart shirt" for $125, or will your be paying a couple hundred to replace the ipod wheel with a small patch of sensitive fabric...

  • Does this sound like what I think it sounds like? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Electro Fabric is exactly what a superhero's costume should be made of. Someone notify Edna Mode [delaranja.com]...

  • Gloves? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rolfwind ( 528248 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @11:55PM (#14176574)
    I wonder if this could lead to light weight gloves that could lead to "Minority Report" type control over objects in a GUI and perhaps a keyboard without a keyboard.
    • Or some farfetched technology that focuses refracted light rays onto a sensor array to create a representation of the world so the computer could follow hand gestures. That would be really neet technology.
    • Minority Report type gloves can be easily done with markers on your fingers, two cameras and a little signal processing for Z extraction. No big deal here. It's not even hard to code that.

  • Extreme pressure? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wkitchen ( 581276 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @11:56PM (#14176577)
    Uh huh. What's the pressure in a typical car tires? Usually around 30psi, right? And as it turns out, the air pressure in the tire is about the same as the pressure between the tire surface and the ground it touches. The tire spreads out until it has enough square inches in contact with the ground that the 30psi x the number of i^2 equals the weight of the car. It MUST be that way, because it's impossible for the air in the tire to exert more pressure on the contact region than it does on the rest of the tire, and the rigidity of the sidewalls is not enough to contribute significant support.

    So the fabric withstood 30psi. And not supporting that pressure in free air like the tire has to do, but simply squeezed against a supporting surface. "Extreme pressure" my ass.
    • Tire pressure is related more to the amount of air you put in your tire than the weight of the car or suface area under the tire. You can probably pump the tire up pretty high before it pops, but it won't increase the pressure on the ground. Also, you can get tires with more surface area to lower the pressure on the ground.

      That being said, it probably isn't extreme pressure. If a car weighs 2 tons, thats 1000 lbs per tire, and if it has a surface area of 20sq in, then that is only like 50 lbs per square i
    • That's a great description of tire pressure and such -- assuming its accurate, and I have no real reason to think otherwise -- but it hardly completes the picture.

      I would also point out, that 30psi can be quite a lot when there are lots of inches squared to deal with. The surface of the tire, lets say 25 square inches in contact with the road -- a 5x5 patch (which I don't know is accurate, but seems reasonable) would produce 750 pounds of pressure on the garment. That makes sense given that four times 750
      • You seem to be confused about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure [wikipedia.org] vs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_(physics) [wikipedia.org]. I think the original post was probably fairly close to the truth, assuming that the tyre walls aren't supporting much of the load (which, having seen people driving on flat tyres, seems reasonable).
        • When the tires aren't supporting the weight of the vehicle, we call it a plane.
          • There are two obvious ways that weight can be transferred from the wheel to the ground - directly through the crush strength of the tyre walls, and indirectly through pressure transfer to the inner surface and upper surfaces then through tension to the wheel.

            p.s. haha.

            • Re:Fantastic -- You're both accurate and misleadin (Score:1, Interesting)

              by Anonymous Coward
              Praps you know your maths, but I don't think you are a mechanic! :)

              I've had dozens of idiots drive over my feet. 30 psi seems about right... although I've broken every bone in both feet at one time or another, I've never even gotten a cracked toenail from having a car drive over one.

              A bigass Lincoln with intact 36 psi tires won't even crack the instep of a mechanic wearing cheap non-steel-toe work boots. HOWEVER, a car running on rims (that is, with a tire that is totally unpressurized) will squinch your
              • Sorry, but what I said agrees exactly with what you've said. Can you explain why you think differently?

                (I said:)
                "I think the original post was probably fairly close to the truth, assuming that the tyre walls aren't supporting much of the load (which, having seen people driving on flat tyres, seems reasonable)."

                which lines up fairly well with your remark that "Crush strength of normal tire sidewalls is negligible by design. ", does it not?

                I like your description of prepackaged toes :)

    • Re:Extreme pressure? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 )
      "Extreme pressure" my ass."

      Sadly, Terrance and Phillip were unavailable for comment.
  • The products that could be made using this are endless to the creative mind!

    Pockets that warn you when they've been picked.
    Underwear that warns people around you when you fart.
    Man, I can hardly wait!

  • User your imagination (Score:5, Insightful)

    by postbigbang ( 761081 ) on Sunday December 04, 2005 @12:01AM (#14176590)
    There are people with spinal cord and brain injuries that could really benefit from this. People with trauma recovery with no sensation that don't realize an appendage is bumping into something. It's not quite like having skin with nerve endings, rather it's an early alert that senses something that you either can't, or can't *yet*.

    In another way, it's also a way to help people recover from muscular atrophy, sensing leg movements, or arm movements. It can tell you when something's too tight, or incorrectly applied. Think physical therapy, or improving your golf swing, football kick, or reducing RSI.

    Although I don't understand its resolution capability, it could also be used for carpet-fabric that could tell people when someone's at the door, or that someone has been in a room, or that the person weighs 100kg, etc.

    Use your imagination beyond sex. I find this fairly fascinating.
  • Not just cybersex.

    There is unlimited potential for this. This is great for monitor preasure on a person. This can be used to measure what a person is doing, reproducing motion. This can be used to model ergonomic and analyzing movement.

    This can also be used for people who have no sensation in limbs as a warning mechanism.

    For cyber sex to work, you need to implement both sides of the equation, force applied to the other side. There is an advantage to cybersex over real sex, ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE.
  • I hope they've also tried some slightly more scientifically rigourous tests.
  • I'd like to see a TV/DVD/media center remote sewn into the arm of my couch, or something like that so I never lose the %$^@#%^ remotes again!
  • I read about electric current being passed through fabric, and was hoping they finally made an invisablity fabric..... (I think I watched too much Batman as a child)...... Still cool though........
    • Didn't you hate the warning label stating [Batman] "Cape does not enable wearer to fly"? :) Maybe the electric current through the fabric will not make the fabric invisible, but perhaps stiff.
  • I hope Eleksen also manages to develop products such as artifical limb down to fingers, feet and toes for handicapped people. I know there are a lot who suffer from a loss.
  • I remember commercials on TV where they would have "Monster Trucks" drive over a compact disc and then smear it with peanut butter and wash it off and just to show how durable it was stick it in a CD player and have it run without skipping....

    Try to tell that to my MC Hammer CD.

  • major league clothing (Score:4, Funny)

    by hardaker ( 32597 ) on Sunday December 04, 2005 @01:31AM (#14176806) Homepage
    can recognize touch, pressure and even the direction and path of a stroke.

    Hmm... I can just envision the streets of NY filled with people wandering around all of whom are touching their clothes as if they were giving signals to the pitcher at a major league baseball game....

  • RESEARCH LEADER: Thank you for bringing him to us, boys. You see, this is not an ordinary towel. He is the RG-400 Smart Towel, designed with a computer chip inside the terry cloth STAN: We don't care. RESEARCH LEADER: You see, here at Tynacorp, our goal was to make the perfect towel. A towel that would sense how wet or dry the user's skin was and fluff itself accordingly. STAN: Dude, we don't care. RESEARCH LEADER: Towelie was our greatest success. Smart enough to beat the average human at chess and ab
  • Yes, but will it reveal Charlize Theron's nipples?
  • Pretty soon, the Hitchhiker's Guide won't just recommend that you carry a towl; It will be your towel!
  • New and Improved!
    Your Plastic Companion will now be able to either give commands where to be caressed or give response based on location/style.

    For your Aibo of course. What? thinking of some other product?
  • You know, the ones that are always 'months' away from the marketplace, and you could make roll-up phones, mp3 players, etc. Also, useful for trackpads, music synthesizer controllers, gamepads, electronic bongos, self-adjusting chairs, scales, variable geometry hang-gliders, and digital hammocks.
  • "Eleksen company executives said the washable fabric can also withstand extreme pressure; they've rolled a car over it without any ill effects."

    The weight of the car is spread over a large enough area that the PSI isn't destructively high.

    The real test - can it survive being stepped on by a person wearing high-heels or golf shoes?

  • This is the skin of the T-600.

    The 600 series had rubber skin
    [with electro-fabric]. We spotted
    them easy. But these [T-800s]
    are new. They look human.
    Sweat, bad breath, everything.
    Very hard to spot. I had to
    wait 'til he moved on you before
    I could zero him.

    In all seriousness, this *could* be a skin for robots.
  • They should have let an elementary school kid wear the clothes for a day. I have seen them destroy a new pair of pants in one day.

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