Nearly two years after the first presentation of Project Jacquard, the company's experiment in integrating technology into clothing, the first garment that actually uses the technology is ready to hit the market.
Levi's Commuter Trucker jackets, in both men's and women's sizes, will be available for sale this fall for around $350, Google announced during SXSW 2017.
As we saw at last year's Google I/O, the jacket's left sleeve is a functional touchpad that you can control by tapping or swiping. A companion app lets you set up "abilities" - so a double tap could start your music, for example, while a swipe up could tell you the time.
The touchpad is powered by a small rechargeable “tag” that attaches to the inside of the case. The battery in the tag will last about two days, according to Ivan Poupyrev, project lead for Project Jacquard, although he says he would like to increase the battery life to several days in the future.
The backbone of Jacquard is a special fabric woven with a conductive thread. Poupyrev notes that the necessary threads can be woven into almost any type of fabric. The long-term goal is to create a full line of Jacquard garments.
Google is still working on how other developers will get started on the platform, so for now the jacket is mainly used to control basic features of your smartphone, like starting or pausing music, answering the phone or reading messages, as well as using Google services like Maps and Calendar. This also means it doesn't work as well with iPhones, as other developers can't access basic features in the same way.
The jacket marks the first project from Google's Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group to become a commercially available product.
