Grabrics: A Foldable Two-Dimensional Textile Input Controller

Textile interfaces can be ubiquitously integrated into the fabrics that already surround us. So far, existing interfaces transfer concepts, such as buttons and sliders, to the textile domain without leveraging the affordances and qualities of fabric. This paper presents Grabrics, a two-dimensional textile sensor that is manipulated by grabbing a fold and moving it between your fingers. Grabrics can be integrated invisibly into everyday clothing or into textile objects, like a living room sofa, while minimizing accidental activation. We describe the construction and the fold-based interaction technique of our Grabrics sensor. A preliminary study shows that Grabrics can be folded and manipulated from any arbitrary position, and it can detect 2D stroke gestures.