Stefan Ivanov

Master Thesis Student

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Master Thesis

"TextiPad: Implementation and Evaluation of a Wearable Textile Touchpad"

TextiPad is a smart-textile prototype, seamlessly embedded into everyday clothing. It is a thin, flexible, and relatively cheap touch-sensing surface that allows the con- trol of software applications. TextiPad has a multi-layer architecture, where three of the layers serve as the basis for sensing touches. It is a resistive touch sensor, there- fore only a single location of touch can be identified. Its continuous monitoring over time allows for extracting gestures, which can be forwarded to a recognizer, comparing them to a predefined set. Due to the affordances of smart textiles and wearable technology, it is certain that such a device is to be used in a mobile con- text and for this reason we designed it to be wearable. Furthermore, all design and implementation steps depicted in this thesis, take the surrounding environment for mobile usage in account. This work describes two prototypes and their evaluation: TextiPad, which represents the bare sensing element, and GestiPants, which is a pair of trousers with a sensor embedded in each leg. The evaluation consists of a proof of functionality study, conducted with a few users, as well as two formal assess- ments, completed by large groups of participants. The first one served to confirm the proper functioning of the hardware and software, while the other two aimed at gathering usability data for different usage scenarios. Aside from having a working and usable product, among our objectives were reliability, robustness and low-cost of the sensor that potentially encourage adoption by the market.

Student Assistant

I am working for Gero Herkenrath on:

TWEND
iCatch
Route Charlemagne - the subproject for developing location based, historical game, spreading over Aachen

Publications

2014

Florian Heller, Stefan Ivanov, Chat Wacharamanotham and Jan Borchers. FabriTouch: Exploring Flexible Touch Input on Textiles. In ISWC '14: Proceedings of the 2014 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers, pages 59–62,September 2014.

2012

Stefan Ivanov. TextiPad: Implementation and Evaluation of a Wearable Textile Touchpad. Master's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University,September 2012.