CWI Awarded Funding for Developing a Smart Urban Jacket

Pablo Cesar’s group (Distributed and Interactive Systems) at CWI, receive NWO KIEM funding (Creative industry – Knowledge Innovation Mapping). Project Cairo, an intelligent soft-robotic jacket, is a collaboration with Borre Akkersdijk (Byborre) and Bas Overvelde (AMOLF).

The purpose of project Cairo is to create an urban jacket that pushes the state-of-the-art of smart-textiles. The jacket will sense and reason about the wearer activity, profile and external conditions to trigger changes in its structure and insulation. To build it, the group will exploit new materials developed by AMOLF (soft-robotic) matter, as a way of changing the physical properties of textiles. This will be added to the proven expertise in merging sensor technology and artificial intelligence, developed by CWI, with the innovative textile design and fabrication techniques of Byborre. The team will fine tune the jacket to assist people commuting by bike, and test it with potential final users applying quantitative and qualitative methods.

The research will address questions like: can smart-textiles play a more active role in controlling our environment and can we design, build, and understand technology that goes beyond an attached sensor and becomes an integral part of the textile/fabric itself?

More information on the CWI website HERE

Sensor tag on knit casing