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 Provost, the Pat and John Rosenwald Professor in the Department of Computer Science, and the Director of Emerging Technologies and Data Analytics in the Center for Technology and Behavioral Health, all at Dartmouth College. He previously served as Associate Dean of the Faculty for the Sciences and as the Executive Director of the Institute for Security Technology Studies. His research interests include security and privacy in smart homes, pervasive computing for healthcare, and wireless networks. He has published over 240 refereed papers, obtained $89m in grant funding, and mentored nearly 100 research students. He is an ACM Fellow, an IEEE Fellow, a 2008 Fulbright Fellow to India, a 2019 Visiting Professor at ETH Zürich, 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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