Abstract:
The tremendous progression of smart textiles has occurred as a result of the
advancement of technologies such as electronics, smart materials, and wearable
technologies. While a large body of research focuses on sensing aspects,
there are research gaps in the exploration of the actuation dimension of smart
e-textiles. This Ph.D. research introduces a novel concept of Augmented Cloth
Displays, which I defined as “output interfaces that can seamlessly be integrated
with clothing to modify its properties in order to provide feedback to extend user
capabilities." To identify the potential research gaps, I first conducted an extensive
literature review of existing work related to augmented cloth displays.
To address some of the limitations I present two novel techniques of enabling
actuation in e-textiles and explorations of two application scenarios for each
technique. In the first technique, I introduce a wearable forearm augmentation
that enables natural touch sensation by applying shear forces onto the skin. As
a potential application of the first technique, I explore a multi-sensory setup that provides a unique digital art-jamming experience. The second technique
is an easily customisable and versatile fabrication technique to realise actuation
in on-textile interfaces. Using the second technique, I investigate a toolkit that
enables XR developers to realise cloth deformation with XR applications. The
original contributions of my work are as follows:
1. A comprehensive literature review of augmented cloth displays.
2. The design and development of two novel techniques of enabling augmented
cloth displays.
3. The design and development of two applications exploring the use of augmented
cloth displays.
4. Empirical findings gathered from a series of user studies and technical evaluations.