ZebraSense: A Double-sided Textile Touch Sensor for Smart Clothing

ZebraSense is a novel dual-sided woven touch sensor that can recognize and differentiate interactions on the top and bottom surfaces of the sensor. ZebraSense is based on an industrial multi-layer textile weaving technique, yet it enables a novel capacitive sensing paradigm, where each sensing element contributes to touch detection on both surfaces of the sensor simultaneously. Unlike the common "sensor sandwich" approach used in previous work, ZebraSense inherently minimizes the number of sensing elements, which drastically simplifies both sensor construction and its integration into soft goods, while preserving maximum sensor resolution. The experimental evaluation confirmed the validity of our approach and demonstrated that ZebraSense is a reliable, efficient, and accurate solution for detecting user gestures in various dual-sided interaction scenarios, allowing for new use cases in smart apparel, home decoration, toys, and other textile objects.