Takram develops smart fabrics

Japan: Takram, has developed a new smart fabric with Augmented Reality (AR) capabilities. The fabric being is designed to capture performance data for a London Transport Museum (LTM) project.

The data captured by the fabric, which is firstly integrated into AR technology with internet of Things (IoT) connected live data, is believed to offer insight into customer behaviour as well as to alert about the maintenance issues. The prototype is developed for TfL (Transport for London) tubes and buses, but the application can also be used in rail and aviation, among other areas. Takram’s goal was to create a textile that could record and map the applied pressure and visualise the data on an augmented-reality interface. Hence a concept is developed with a TC2 digital jacquard loom, into which switches and AR markers are woven into an abstract pattern using electronics and conductive yarn.

This whole process further correlates the pressure map to time and location data enabling the IoT-connected textile to offer an exact picture of where, when and to what extent textiles can be used on London’s transport network.