Research: Capacitive Touch Sensor Technology

The Center for Functional Fabrics (CFF) is a transdisciplinary center that advances smart textiles. Our STAR project was to create a maker kit for high schoolers using a textile Capacitive Touch Sensors (CTS) in a multi-controller system. The CTS is a fabric knitted with air-covered spandex and conductive carbon yarn which is then connected to a micro-controller. It is an external input device that can be programmed to interact with a computer when touched. The goal was to make the CTS accessible and marketable to expose younger generations to the technology and grow the smart textile industry. The CTS was designed as a game controller: a single button for Flappy Bird, a slider for Brick Breaker, and a zig zag button pattern for Whack-a-Mold. I used Shima Seiki SDS-ONE APEX computer programs to design various form factors. There were certain limitations set by the streamlined system of pattern development and the carbon yarn which must be knit continuously. The final pieces are large CTS game controllers for the purposes of understanding if and how the CTS works when scaled up. We explored different applications to demonstrate the flexibility of the CTS and to spur on more research.