Microsoft Smart fabric Patent approved: detected pocket action, associated with the user's mobile phone to switch to one-handed mode

CTOnews.com, Nov. 2, according to a list released by the US Trademark and Patent Office last week, Microsoft has obtained a patent for smart clothing technology that can detect whether your trouser pocket contains keys to remind users.

In the smart fabric technology conceived by Microsoft, it uses a double-layer design and can use different sensors to recognize objects or touch gestures.

The first layer is equipped with a number of resistance and capacitance sensors, each capacitive sensor is made of two pieces of conductive fabric, and the resistive sensor is sandwiched between two pieces of conductive fabric to sense pressure.

The second layer of the fabric has multiple inductors and NFC (near field communication) sensors. Following the same pattern as the first layer, each inductive sensor is paired with the NFC sensor and shares the same coil.

Through the double design, the fabric can detect a variety of objects or respond to different interactive gestures.

The smart fabric can also identify items in the pocket, such as coins, wallets and keys, and can be alerted by mobile phones if users forget their keys when they go out.

One of the examples of patent pictures attached by CTOnews.com is as follows: if a user's hand is detected in the pants pocket, it will automatically associate the phone used and switch it to one-handed mode.

The smart fabric can also be used in the VR field, such as mapping the user's pocket action and placing weapons in the game to a specific location.