One or more electrical components may be incorporated into a piece of fabric. The electrical component may include an internal portion that is located inside of the fabric, an external portion that is located on an exterior surface of the fabric, and protrusions that extend through the fabric to electrically and/or mechanically couple the internal and external portions of the electrical component. The internal portion of the component may be inserted into the fabric during formation of the fabric. The external portion of the component may be coupled to the internal portion after the fabric is formed by inserting the protrusions on the internal portion into recesses in the external portion. The external portion of the component may contain skin-facing and/or viewer-facing input-output devices, while the internal portion may contain circuitry that electrically communicates with the input-output devices in the external portion.

A wearable article comprising a knitted fabric formed in the shape of a glove. A force sensing element coupled to the fabric, the force sensing element comprising a resistive sensing system and a fluidic sensing system comprising one or more soft tubes coupled to a surface of the wearable glove wherein the resistive and fluid sensing systems correspond to first and second different sensor modalities which are physically decoupled. Control circuitry is coupled to receive signals from both the resistive sensing system and the fluidic sensing system and to combine resistive and fluidic sensing system signals provided thereto to perform at least one of: pose estimation, environment sensing, human state sensing, and static and dynamic task identification.

Weaving equipment may include strand positioning equipment that positions warp strands and that inserts weft strands among the warp strands to form fabric. The weaving equipment may include one or more guide arms that pushes warp strands in the weft direction during weaving. Fabrics having warp strands that extend in both the warp direction and the weft direction may be used in forming circuitry in fabrics such as touch sensor circuitry. For example, a touch sensor in a fabric may be formed using first conductive warp strands that form first touch sensor electrodes and second conductive warp strands that form second touch sensor electrodes that overlap with the first touch sensor electrodes. The second conductive warp strands may each have a first portion that extends in the warp direction and a second portion that extends in the weft direction across the first touch sensor electrodes.

Gloves are disclosed that are worn by a user while manipulating an electronic device equipped with a capacitive touchscreen. The gloves allow the wearer to manipulate the capacitive touchscreen device without removing the gloves, which is very advantageous in cold environments. The gloves enable full hand functionality, allowing the user to type, swipe, squeeze, pinch, and select on the capacitive touchscreen device as if they were using their bare hand. The gloves are made with a low resistant yarn knit or woven into a comfortable fabric that connects the body's bioelectricity through the glove to a capacitive touchscreen. Ordinary gloves will not work with a capacitive touchscreen. In the manufacturing process, the low resistant yarn is first twisted around at least one other yarn having a specific performance property, such as thermal resistance. This twisting assists in uniform knitting and improves the consistent resistivity of the finished glove.

Provided are a conductive fabric and a manufacturing method thereof. The conductive fabric has a structure in which warp yarns and weft yarns are interwoven with each other, wherein at least one of the warp yarns and the weft yarns includes carbon nanotube fibers, the carbon nanotube fibers contain N-doped carbon nanotubes, the nitrogen content in each of the carbon nanotube fibers is between 1 wt% to 5 wt% based on the total weight of the carbon nanotube fiber, and the content of the N-doped carbon nanotubes in the conductive fabric is at least 0.1 wt% based on the total weight of the conductive fabric.

Embodiments relate to conductive textiles and methods of their production, as well as systems for electronically connecting devices through conductive textiles. An example textile comprises a first electrically conductive track; a second electrically conductive track; and at least one non-conductive portion. At least a portion of the first electrically conductive track overlaps or is in close proximity to at least a portion of the second electrically conductive track. At least said portions of the respective tracks are separated by an insulating material so that there is no electrical coupling between the first and second tracks.

This document describes an interactive object with multiple electronics modules. An interactive object (e.g., a garment) includes a grid or array of conductive thread woven into the interactive object, and an internal electronics module coupled to the grid of conductive thread. The internal electronics module includes a first subset of electronic components, such as sensing circuitry configured to detect touch-input to the grid of conductive thread. An external electronics module that includes a second subset of electronic components (e.g., a microprocessor, power source, or network interface) is removably coupled to the interactive object via a communication interface. The communication interface enables communication between the internal electronics module and the external electronics module when the external electronics module is coupled to the interactive object.

This document describes 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.

Systems and methods for interactive textiles including conductive fibers are provided. An interactive textile may comprise a flexible substrate, an embroidered thread-pattern defining an ornamental feature on a first surface of the flexible substrate, and a touch input sensor comprising a set of conductive threads coupled to a second surface of the flexible substrate at a corresponding area of at least a portion of the embroidered thread pattern. The set of conductive threads form a conductive thread-pattern on the second surface that is conformal to the ornamental feature on the first surface at the portion of the embroidered thread pattern.

Systems and methods for interactive objects including conductive lines are provided. An interactive object may comprise a capacitive touch sensor comprising two or more non-crossing conductive lines that form at least a first conductive line pattern. The first conductive line pattern may comprise a first, second, and third sequence of the two or more non-crossing conductive lines relative to a respective first, second, and third input direction. The interactive object may be configured to detect touch input to the capacitive touch sensor based on a change in capacitance associated with the two or more non-crossing conductive lines, identify at least one of the first, second, or third line sequence based on the touch input to the capacitive touch sensor, and determine a respective gesture corresponding to the first, second, or third sequence of two or more non-crossing conductive lines.