Dissertation Title:  Textile Macroelectronics: Architecting and Developing Sensate Fabrics Across Scales

Abstract:

Textiles are omnipresent and some of the oldest forms of art and culture in human civilization. They are our protective skin, the interface between our bodies and the environment, and media for self-expression and collective experience. As electronics become more compliant, miniaturized, and low-cost, textiles provide an ideal technology integration substrate to further drive the ubiquitous computing era. My research fuses recent advances in functional materials, digital fabrication, hardware systems, and immersive technologies to demonstrate Textile Macroelectronics architecture and develop sensate and computational fabrics across scales.

In this thesis, I propose a ubiquitous computational textile framework, a synergy between functional device selections, textile structures, fabrication tools, and system architecture that integrates a distributed network of sensing and computational elements as primitives or raw materials in the manufacturing process of electronic textile products. In the first part of the thesis, I present several methods, artifacts, and implementations of sensate fabrics using functional fibers and digital machine knitting. I argue that to promote the disruption and adoption of sensate fabrics and achieve seamless integration, we require a better hierarchical understanding of textile construction and fiber-fabric properties, as well as ways to integrate electronics and functionalities with industrial textile fabrication processes. By controlling functional and common yarn inputs, along with knitting structures and patterns, I can architect fabric forms and aesthetics while tuning their electrical and mechanical properties. With this approach, I have developed a set of custom proxemic and tactile textile interfaces based on capacitive and piezoresistive sensing for musical expression, human-computer interaction, activity recognition, and multi-sensory experiences in various forms such as cloth, footwear, mats, carpets, and large-scale architectural facades. I will also discuss my work in exploring flexible-stretchable and soft printed circuit technologies and incorporating multi-modal sensing with distributed computation to address scalability issues inherent in large and dense sensate fabrics. These efforts have led to novel power, interconnection, and networking paradigms that allow us to transition from application-specific sensate fabrics to generic computational textiles that can be tailored and programmed for various applications. Finally, through these collective and complementary efforts, I hope to demonstrate an ecosystem of fabric artifacts that will lead us toward Electronic Textile Gaia, a vision in which sensing and intelligence are seamlessly interconnected and integrated into the fabric of everyday life—from in-body, on-body, room-scale, to architectural textiles—and for applications ranging from physiological and physical activity monitoring to interactive media and built environments.

Committee members:

Joseph A. Paradiso, Ph.D.
Alexander W. Dreyfoos (1954) Professor of Media Arts and Sciences
Director of Responsive Environments Group

Svetlana Boriskina, Ph.D.
Principal Research Scientist, MIT Mechanical Engineering
Director of Multifunctional Metamaterials Group

Alexander Stolyarov, Ph.D.
CEO of Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA), Manufacturing USA Institute