Google releases new version of Jacquard for smart clothing

Google is revamping its smart clothing project, known as Project Jacquard. In version 2.0 a smart ‘tag’ is added to clothing, with which commands can be given to a smartphone via gestures.

Cnet describes this in a conversation with Ivan Poupyrev and Dan Giles, who lead the development of Project Jacquard at Google. The intention is to make clothing smart with the project, for which a kind of tag is used that can be incorporated into clothing. With version 2.0, Google has significantly reduced the size of the device, so that it now has the dimensions of an SD card, according to Cnet.

In addition, the mobile application associated with Project Jacquard has also been modified. This can be used to set the tag, to associate different gestures with different commands. Gestures in this case mean that the tag can be swiped in different ways. For now, it is only possible to pass various commands via Google Assistant, but Google plans to build in more functionality in the future. Then it should also be possible to link multiple commands to a gesture.

The first new product that Google is releasing within the renewed Project Jacquard is a backpack that was developed together with Yves Saint Laurent. It costs $995, but Google has promised that cheaper products will also be released, although no further details have been given yet.

Google introduced Project Jacquard in 2015, but it wasn’t until 2017 that the first smart jacket came out, developed together with Levi’s. It cost $350 and could give various commands to the smartphone, but it never became very popular.