This week’s guest on The WTiN Podcast is Teddy Seyed, a senior researcher in the RiSE group at Microsoft.

Headquartered in Redmond in the US, Microsoft is a multinational technology company that I’m sure we’re all familiar with. The RiSE group in particular focuses on advancing software engineering research, which includes working on smart textiles since around 2014. 

In this episode, Seyed talks about two of his latest research projects: Capacitivo, which is a contact-based object recognition technique developed for interactive fabrics, and Fabriccio, a touchless gesture sensing technique developed for interactive fabrics. He talks about how they work, potential applications, and the next steps needed to commercialise them. Elsewhere, Seyed talks about some of the biggest challenges facing smart textiles such as scale, deformation, and the need for interdisciplinary collaboration, while also mentioning where sustainability fits into all of this.

To find out more about Microsoft’s RiSE Group, visit www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/group/research-software-engineering-rise/