A competitor for Google's Jacquard project

March 08, 2020

Google’s Jacquard project will be ready for mass use next year. But a strong competitor, Impressivo, has just appeared and does not intend to leave the monopoly to the famous American firm.

Impressivo is a startup based in South Korea, which develops a fabric to create smart clothes. As a reminder, Google’s Jacquard project will be used next year in the form of a Levis denim jacket.

Impressivo faiv competitor Jacquard project of Google

Like Google, Impressivo follows a similar manufacturing method: clothes weaving the sensors directly into the fabric and capable of detecting the wearer's touch and gestures. The goal is to provide a large number of features to control your cell phone without having to take it out of your pocket.

But beware, there is still a big difference between the two products. The Korean brand has decided to use resistive sensors, as opposed to the capacitive sensors used by the Jacquard project, to detect pressure. This means that it is possible to support multitouch gestures and therefore record multiple interactions at the same time. The Korean brand's model also allows users to add haptic interactions and therefore offer users a type of feedback.

Korean startup CEO David Ahn spoke at the 2016 Web Summit in Lisbon. David Ahn said he was in talks with companies to incorporate his tech into sportswear, but has not released names. He also talked about the potential of his technology for military clothing.

Faiv is still in the prototype stage but it is a safe bet that we will hear about it very soon. Suffice to say that I will follow the evolution of this very ready business!