Home / Interviews / Interview with Justin Chan & Shyam Gollakota
Justin Chan & Shyam Gollakota
Justin Chan & Shyam Gollakota
PhD student & director of Networks & Mobile Systems Lab respectively

Interview with Justin Chan & Shyam Gollakota

Drawn to a magnet

A fabric that can store data without any electronics or batteries has been developed by researchers at the University of Washington. Due to magnetic properties of a conductive thread, data is stored in the fabric, which acts as a hard disk. The stored data is then read using a magnetometer, which already exists in smartphones to measure magnetic strength and direction to assist with navigation. The magnetised fabric retains data even after it is washed, dried or ironed. The team of PhD student Justin Chan and Shyam Gollakota, director of the university's Networks & Mobile Systems Lab, presented a paper on their finding on October 25, 2017, at the Association for Computing Machinery's User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) Symposium in Quebec City. They exploited previously unexplored magnetic properties of off-the-shelf conductive thread. They experimented by storing the pass code to an electronic door lock on a patch of conductive fabric sewn to a shirt cuff. The door could be unlocked by waving the cuff in front of an array of magnetometers. The researchers also created fashion accessories like a tie, belt, necklace and wristband and decoded the data by swiping a smartphone across them. Justin Chan spoke to Fibre2Fashion's Dipesh Satapathy about the development.

TT: Data storage in fabrics sounds unbelievable. Can you please describe the origin of this idea?

In the past, our lab has worked on projects that involved conductive thread and magnetometers (sensors that can detect a magnetic field) on smartphones. We wondered if we could magnetise the conductive thread, similarly to how one can magnetise a metal nail. To do this, we took a permanent fridge magnet and rubbed it across the conductive thread. When we brought it close to the smartphone, it was able to sense whether the thread was close by. We then realised that with this capability we could create clothes that can store data and act like a magnetic hard disk.


Data storage in fabrics sounds unbelievable. Can you please describe the origin of this idea?
 
TT: As your patches lose 28-36 per cent of their original field strength over a week and need to be remagnetised, do you foresee a solution to this problem in future to avoid the remagnetisation hassle?

Despite this initial decrease, our fabrics do not get completely demagnetised. In fact, our conductive fabrics still retained a magnetic field even after several months. Our approach is similar to hotel keycards which also have to be remagnetised regularly. Thus, our fabrics are suited for storing data for relatively short periods of time.

TT: How does your gesture recognition system work?

We created a glove with conductive thread embroidered into its fingertips. While wearing the glove, we can swipe across a smartphone, while it is in our pocket. The smartphone can then sense which direction you are swiping in and pick up or dismiss a call, or pause or play your music. This can be useful if you are driving and you don't want to take your smartphone out of your pocket.

TT: Since when has been your team engaged in this research? Tell us about your team members.

We started on this project in early 2017 as part of my PhD research. The team consists of myself and my advisor Professor Shyam Gollakota. We are both based in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington.

TT: Are there other research teams elsewhere who have worked or are working on this idea?

To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to explore the idea of storing data into clothes using the magnetic properties of conductive fabric.

TT: What is the limit to storing data in fabrics?

We can store 225 different codes on a shirt cuff. This is sufficient for many inventory tagging and authentication applications.

TT: Do you have plans to commercialise the technology in near future?

We have not decided on whether we wish to commercialise this.

TT: Tell us briefly about the specific fabric that your team has developed.

We used off-the-shelf conductive threads for our experiments. As it turns out, all conductive threads can be magnetised as they contain traces of metal. We used a conductive thread that yielded a high magnetic field strength and was also thin enough to be used with a sewing machine.

TT: A typical smartphone magnetometer measures magnetic strength and direction. Does it need any tweaking at the hardware level for it to assist in reading data from the magnetised fabric?

No. All modifications can be done at the software level. We could develop an app today and push it to your smartphone, and you would be able to read data from your clothes. We have some sample Android code available on the project website that allows you to see magnetometer readings.

TT: What are some of the other exciting research projects under way related to smart fabrics or fibres at your university?

Our lab completed a project that involved the use of conductive fabrics to turn a shirt into an antenna that can communicate data over the air by absorbing or reflecting ambient FM radio waves.

TT: Do you collaborate with any other institute or private company for research in this area?

We have yet to collaborate with other institutes or private companies on projects related to smart fabrics. However, we would be open to collaboration should the right opportunity arise.

TT: What kind of varied applications of smart fibres do you foresee in future in day-to-day life?

There are two major applications here. First, imagine if a department store wanted to tag clothing with a unique identifier, they could use a barcode, which is visually obtrusive or an RFID tag, which has to be read with an expensive RFID reader. With our approach, all clothes can be unobtrusively tagged with a unique identifier that is embedded into the fabric. Furthermore, all of our tags can be read with an everyday smartphone. Second, what we envision is for uniformed employees like doctors, or hotel or mall employees, to have our specialised fabrics embedded in their uniforms. So, instead of scanning an RFID keycard to get to work every day, these employees can instead scan the cuff of their shirt against a reader and easily access authorised areas.


What kind of varied applications of smart fibres do you foresee in future in day-to-day life?
Published on: 15/02/2018

DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this column are solely of the interviewee, and they do not reflect in any way the opinion of technicaltextile.net.


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