Entrepreneur

Becky Stewart, Anti-Alias Labs

Academic Partner

Andrew McPherson, Queen Mary University of London

Project Title

Integrated Buttons

Project Description

E-textiles are a relatively young area of research and development. Significant progress has been made in creating electronic sensors out of fabrics, you can already find them in commercial products such as touch-buttons embedded into jacket sleeves that control music playing from a phone. Less research has been done into how chips may be easily and beautifully integrated into fabric. Becky Stewart’s residency with Queen Mary University of London looked to do just this, exploring how the button could house integrated circuitry and process data from fabric sensors.

The residency allowed Stewart to prototype her Integrated Button three times, and ultimately create a final version combining 3D printing, laser cutting, circuit board milling, soldering and hand sewing. For the Creativeworks London Festival in April 2016 Stewart continued work on her project developing it into a full garment. Throughout the process Stewart kept an online blog, documenting the different phases of development.

Through the residency Stewart took up teaching opportunities at Queen Mary, subsequently the university offered her a lecturer post and as a result she has left Anti-Alias Labs to work for Queen Mary full time. There are plans for an academic conference paper to be written on the project and the possibility of submitting it to the International Symposium on Wearable Computers. Also in consideration is the creation of a MSc student project to develop new touch sensor technology.