Towards textiles as haptic actuators: a collaboration between textile and perception research

The dream of every wearables designer and user is fully integrated, silent, flexible and comfortable haptic actuators. This dream could possibly be fulfilled by electroactive textile. Electroactive textile is made by weaving or knitting yarn coated with a conductive agent, electroactive polymer and ionogel. Insertion and de-insertion of ions into the electroactive polymer occurs when a current is applied to the yarn, which causes the yarn to contract and expand. The movement of multiple yarns woven or knitted in a textile could give varying types of haptic stimuli on the skin, depending on yarn properties, fabric morphology and actuation control.
The dream of electroactive textile requires a strong relationship between user research from user needs and experience and textile development. Therefore, the textile is under development in parallel with perception research towards its use as a haptic actuator. The textile development explores ways to integrate electroactive yarns of different shapes in to textile, and also explores different haptic textiles as possible substitutes to explore behavior of different textile structures when actuated. Perception experiments with substitute materials are necessary to find the properties electroactive textile needs in order to present a haptic stimulus that a user can perceive, to relay to textile development.