Smart Textiles - from talking jumpers to intelligent instruments

Sophie Skach is a fashion designer turned researcher in the field of smart textiles, soft robotics, and social computing. While as a designer, she specialised in knitwear and menswear, her academic work focuses on exploring the potential of textiles in wearable technology. Usually based in London at Queen Mary University at the Centre for Advanced Robotics, she now resides in Iceland for a few months to work on smart textile interfaces at the Intelligent Instruments Lab.

On Wednesday the 22nd of March in Þverholt 11, Sophie will give a lecture on Smart Textiles where she gives an overview of the growing field of electronic (or e-) textiles and their future potential. It will provide an introduction about material properties, their design engineering, as well as challenges. An insight to the different forms and use cases such e-textiles will be presented, ranging from jumpers that talk to each other, soft instruments made with knitting needles, movement sensing trousers, and even fabric based robots.