Tag: wearable technology

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).

The first person to receive a ticket for using the smartwatch while behind the wheel is in Quebec, Canada.

A man named Jeffrey Macesin, who lives in Quebec, Canada, has now become the first person to receive a traffic ticket for having used the Apple Watch while behind the wheel of a vehicle that was in operation.

That said, Macesin has revealed that he intends to appeal this fine as he was not using a handheld device.

The ticket was for CAD$120 (approximately US$96) and four demerit points were added to Macesin’s license after he was spotted by police using his Apple Watch to change the song that was playing on his iPhone. The smartphone, itself, was in a bag, plugged into a charging cable that was also connecting the device to the radio. He explained “I have it in the bag charging while the auxiliary cable is plugged in to the radio and this controls my phone to play the music,” adding that “I was changing songs with my hand on the steering wheel.”

As the Apple Watch was used to change the music, a police car turned on his lights and pulled Macesin over.

Macesin obtained his smartwatch on the first day of the device launch, April 24. He has now been prosecuted under Section 439.1 of the Quebec Highway Safety Code, which says that “no person may, while driving a road vehicle, use a hand-held device that includes a telephone function.” What Macesin is now arguing is that a smartwatch is not a hand-held device. It is wearable technology. The reason is that the device was not in his hand, it was on his wrist.

Wearable technology has caused people to experience troubles behind the wheel in the past. In October 2013, a woman was famously pulled over for having been wearing smartglasses. Cecilia Abadie was driving in San Diego while wearing the Google Glass headset. That said, that situation was different from the one involving the Apple Watch in Quebec, as the law in California said that the regulation that was violated was for “driving with monitor visible to the driver,” which specified the device display as opposed to the nature of the gadget.