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Wearable Smart Jacket
Google and Levi's recently showed off their $350 smart jean jacket.
(Levi's® Commuter™ x Jacquard by Google Trucker Jacket)
Google and Levi's showed off this week a new joint project: a $350 smart jean jacket. While this jacket literally puts tech on your sleeve, it does it in a subtle way that doesn't require putting another screen on your body. In doing so, it offers a glimpse of what smart fabrics can do and of the evolution of the wearables market -- one in which consumers won't have to wear a clunky accessory that screams high tech.The smart Commuter jacket, which was introduced over the weekend at SXSW in Austin, is aimed at those who bike to work. It has technology woven into its fibres, and allows users to take phone calls, get directions and check the time, by tapping and swiping their sleeves. That delivers information to them through their headphones so that they can keep their eyes on the road without having to fiddle with a screen. The jacket should hit stores this fall.
Its smart fibres are washable; they're powered by a sort of smart cufflink that you'll have to remove when you wash the jacket. The cufflink has a two-day battery life.
Science fiction great Murray Leinster would have been down with it; check out the sleeve communicator from his 1945 short story First Contact.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 3/4/2017)
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