Workshop on smart garments
Stefan Schneegaß, Jingyuan Cheng, Kristof Van Laerhoven, Oliver Amft · 2014
Over the last years different wearable electronic devices, technically similar to smart phones, have become available in the form factor of watches and glasses. However, including wearable sensing, actuation, and communication technologies directly into garments is still a great challenge. Cloths offer the chance to unobtrusively integrate new functionalities. Nevertheless, it is essential to take into account that garments and cloths are fundamentally different from electronic devices. Manufacturing processes for fabrics and cloths, drivers for fashion, and user expectation with regard to comfort and durability are not comparable to classical electronic devices. In smart watches and glasses applications resemble common smart phone functionality (e.g., picture taking, (instant) messaging, voice communication, presentation of reminders) with new input and output channels. In contrast to this, new possibilities for sensing, actuation, and interaction are opening entirely new applications on garments. These new applications are needed to be identified and will then again drive the advances in smart garments. In this workshop, we focus on novel applications for garments. We discuss underlying abstraction layers that allow developers to create applications that are independent from a specific garment and that can be used with different garments. Furthermore, we invite research contributions and position statements on sensing and actuation as the basic mechanisms for smart garments. Overall the workshop aims at improving our understanding of the fundamental challenges when wearable computing moves beyond accessories into garments.