Dry-Clean Only, No Doubt

The New Scientist's patent office reporter finds this patent pending: a keyboard embdedded into a jacket sleeve.

In the not-too-distant future when you see someone impatiently tapping their sleeve while waiting for a flight , they might in fact be writing a letter of complaint to the airline company.

German electronics company Infineon Technologies reckons the main reason wearable computers have yet to take off is that there is no simple way to use a keyboard for text entry. The solution, according to Infineon, is to fit a keyboard into a jacket during manufacture.

The garment can be woven from ordinary cloth. The arm of the jacket is then interlaced with a criss-cross of thin insulated wires, with the insulation etched away at spots corresponding to the keys of a keyboard layout. When a low voltage is fed through the wires, touching the pads bridges the wires underneath, turning the sleeve into a keyboard.

To protect the keyboard from wear-and-tear and washing, the overall area is sealed with insulating polymer. The woven wires would be connected directly to the rest of the electronics, which would either be embedded in the lining of the coat or carried somewhere on the body.