Abstract: We present Tessutivo, a contact-based inductive sensing technique for contextual interactions on interactive fabrics. Our technique recognizes conductive objects (mainly metallic) that are commonly found in households and workplaces, such as keys, coins, and electronic devices. We built a prototype containing six by six spiral-shaped coils made of conductive thread, sewn onto a four-layer fabric structure. We carefully designed the coil shape parameters to maximize the sensitivity based on a new inductance approximation formula. Through a ten-participant study, we evaluated the performance of our proposed sensing technique across 27 common objects. We yielded 93.9% real-time accuracy for object recognition. We conclude by presenting several applications to demonstrate the unique interactions enabled by our technique.
David Kotz is the Pat and John Rosenwald Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Dartmouth College. He previously served as Interim Provost, as Associate Dean of the Faculty for the Sciences, as the Executive Director of the Institute for Security Technology Studies, and on the US Healthcare IT Policy Committee. His research interests include security and privacy, pervasive computing for healthcare, and wireless networks. He has published over 230 refereed papers, obtained over $80m in grant funding, and mentored nearly 100 research students. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, a Distinguished Member of the ACM, a 2008 Fulbright Fellow to India, a 2019 Visiting Professor at ETH Zurich, and an elected member of Phi Beta Kappa. He received his AB in Computer Science and Physics from Dartmouth in 1986, and his PhD in Computer Science from Duke University in 1991.
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