Google today unveiled a partnership with the Levi’s fashion brand to create smart clothing using Project Jacquard, a conductive textile material that can be woven into any fabric.
Google’s ATAP research team described how it created the material from scratch – and worked with several textile makers to weave it into various materials. It can be made in virtually any color or thickness.
It showed off a jacket made with Jacquard on stage that could work as a touchpad. The material was pressure sensitive and could even detect hovering motions In another example, the material was able to dial contact on your phone with just a swipe.
Of course, just having the cool tech isn’t enough to get people wearing it, and Google isn’t exactly a fashion company, so it announced the partnership with Levi’s to bring Jacquard-enabled clothing to the market soon.
It’s an awesome concept – you can swipe away a phone call without ever interrupting conversation on a dinner date, or switch song tracks easily while walking down the street. The textile can be woven into any size that you need it to be as well.
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Earlier, Google unveiled Soli, a tiny radar-based sensor that lets you control devices with your fingers as the interface – no touchscreen required.
We were able to try out Project Jacquard earlier during I/O. Look out for our hands-on soon.
Read next: Everything Google announced at Google I/O 2015 in one handy list
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