E-textiles: The intersection of computation and traditional textiles Interactive Sample Book Marija Andonovska Master Thesis, Medialogy Aalborg University Copenhagen Spring 2009 Acknowledgements I would like to thank the following people for their assistance, participation and moral support during the project work. Luis Emilio Bruni, Smilen Dimitrov, Elisabeth Heimdal, Diffus, Lars Bojsen-Møller, Pernille Ravn, Thomas Jaskov 2 PART 1: INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................................ 5 1 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................................................. 5 1.1 PRELIMINARY PROBLEM AREA ................................................................................................................................ 6 1.2 FRAMEWORK OF THE THESIS – INTERACTIVE BOOK SAMPLE ......................................................................................... 7 1.3 OVERVIEW ........................................................................................................................................................ 8 1.4 DEFINITIONS ...................................................................................................................................................... 9 1.4.1 Material/ Fabric/ Textile ........................................................................................................................ 9 1.4.2 Smart Materials/ Intelligent Materials ................................................................................................ 10 2 DEFINING PERVASIVE CONCEPTS.................................................................................................................. 13 2.1 A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION ........................................................................................... 13 2.2 UBIQUITOUS COMPUTING .................................................................................................................................. 14 2.3 PERVASIVE COMPUTING ..................................................................................................................................... 17 2.4 AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE ..................................................................................................................................... 18 2.4.1 The Invisible Computer......................................................................................................................... 20 2.5 WEARABLE COMPUTING .................................................................................................................................... 21 2.5.1 Electronic Textiles ................................................................................................................................ 23 2.6 SUB – CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................................... 25 3 CURRENT AND FUTURE TECHNOLOGIES FOR WEARABLES AND E-TEXTILES .................................................. 26 3.1 INPUTS ........................................................................................................................................................... 26 3.1.1 Input Interfaces .................................................................................................................................... 27 3.2 OUTPUTS ........................................................................................................................................................ 29 3.3 COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES ........................................................................................................................ 29 3.3.1 Long-range communications ............................................................................................................... 30 3.3.2 Short-range communications ............................................................................................................... 30 3.4 DATA MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGIES AND INTEGRATED CIRCUITS ................................................................................ 32 3.5 ENERGY MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGIES ................................................................................................................. 33 3.6 RESPONSIVE MATERIALS .................................................................................................................................... 34 3.7 SUB CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................................. 38 4 RELATED WORK ............................................................................................................................................ 39 4.1 SUB-CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................................. 44 5 CONTEXT AND FUNCTIONALITY OF WEARABLES AND E-TEXTILES ................................................................ 45 3 6 REFLECTION.................................................................................................................................................. 46 7 DEFINING THE PROBLEM .............................................................................................................................. 48 PART 2: DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION ............................................................................................................. 49 8 DESIGN ......................................................................................................................................................... 49 8.1 INTERACTIVE BOOK SAMPLE ................................................................................................................................ 49 8.1.1 Brainstorming of ideas ......................................................................................................................... 50 8.1.2 Design specifications ............................................................................................................................ 51 8.2 SUB- CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................................ 64 9 IMPLEMENTATION ....................................................................................................................................... 65 9.1 CHOICE OF PHYSICAL COMPUTING PLATFORM ......................................................................................................... 65 9.2 IMPLEMENTATION OF THE INTERACTIVE SAMPLES .................................................................................................... 67 9.2.1 Sub-conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 70 PART 3: METHODOLOGY, SURVEY AND FEEDBACK .............................................................................................. 71 10 METHODOLOGY ....................................................................................................................................... 71 10.1 SURVEY METHODOLOGY ..................................................................................................................................... 71 10.1.1 Survey background and procedure ...................................................................................................... 72 10.2 SURVEY FEEDBACK ............................................................................................................................................ 74 10.3 FEEDBACK FROM THE PRODUCT REACTION CARDS ................................................................................................... 77 11 DISCUSSION .............................................................................................................................................. 78 12 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................................ 81 12.1 FUTURE PERSPECTIVES ....................................................................................................................................... 81 13 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................................................... 82 4 PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1 Introduction During the past couple of decades, we have seen progress at a revolutionary scale in many fields of science and technology. The invention and constant improvement of electronic chips, computers, the internet, wireless communication, nanotechnology and many other developments, have transformed most of our world and the lives of nearly every human being of our Western society. Looking ahead, the technology of the future seems even more promising. It will have features such as ubiquitousness (Weiser, 1991), ambient intelligence (Punie, 2005), terascale, nanoscale, complexity, cognition and holism (Tao, 2005). The number of systems and information appliances connected to the internet and mobile network are already being counted by the billions1, with over one trillion (1x109) operations crossing the internet every minute. As envisioned by Tao (2005) nanotechnology will soon allow us to: “…arrange