Wearable technology could go in a whole new direction with Google’s Project Jacquard

This new Advanced Technology and Projects group wants wearables to be somewhat like fabric touchscreens.

Google is testing out a whole new direction for its wearable technology through the manufacture of some very high-tech fabrics that could be incorporated into wearables that could be worn as clothing.

This effort is being made by the company’s Project Soli and Project Jacquard teams in its new projects group.

They are a part of the Google Advanced Technology and Projects Group. Those two projects, which actually weave the electronics right into fabrics that can be worn as a combination of clothing and wearable technology, and that use a gesture-based interface, were first unveiled in San Francisco at the Google I/O developer event on Friday. By bringing those two projects together, the result has been what could somewhat be described as a fabric that functions a bit like a touchscreen.

Coming in contact with this wearable technology in various ways would activate it like a touchscreen.

There are different ways of stroking over the tech fabric, which would signal different events to take place. One could, for example, make a call over a smartphone, while another might turn the lights on in a room. Various types of contact with the patch of technology woven fabric would make it possible to accomplish an array of different types of goals.

In order to get in on the potential for this wearable tech, Levi Strauss & Co. has already entered into a partnership deal with Google.

Project Jacquard, itself, brings two different types of technologies together. The first is to weave together the conductive threads and work them into a patch of cloth. The second is to create an electronics package that would function with those threads in order to be able to read what they have sensed, so that it can be relayed into a type of signal that could be understood by a computer.

This wearable technology project was named after the first mechanical loom in history that was designed to be able to create complex fabric styles and patterns (one example of what it could do was brocades).