{"id":1580,"date":"2012-03-26T16:04:04","date_gmt":"2012-03-26T06:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.privatefleet.com.au\/?p=1580"},"modified":"2020-06-20T01:49:19","modified_gmt":"2020-06-19T15:49:19","slug":"fab-new-materials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/home\/fab-new-materials\/","title":{"rendered":"Fab New Materials"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sit in a new car, and I wonder what materials you\u2019ll find yourself seated on.\u00a0 Cleverly designed materials can ward off smells, resist stains, and even repel hair and other loose bits so that the vacuum cleaner can suck them away easily when it comes time for giving the car a good clean out.\u00a0 But take this a step further and imagine seats that have a high-tech fabric that can be part of a car\u2019s communications system \u2013 think of this as being a bit like a voice control.\u00a0 Perplexed?<\/p>\n<p>Recently, researchers at a polytechnic in Montreal have been intrigued by how fabrics could be used as part of a control structure for onboard computers and other systems.\u00a0 What some of the researchers have come up with is fascinating.\u00a0 They have devised a touch-sensitive fabric that reacts to finger swipes or touches.\u00a0 I guess some people could see this coming with touch screen computers, and such.\u00a0 It\u2019s amazing that the fabric has been implanted with electronics, hooked up to software and, hey presto, you\u2019ve got a surface that receives and gives messages.<\/p>\n<p>The touch sensitive fabric could be used in a car as a potential smartphone system or it could even be used to control other car functions like the audio system.\u00a0 The audio system, for example, could have the volume adjusted by swiping or touching the side bolster of the seat.<\/p>\n<p>Seat fabric materials would still need to have that classy feel about them to give the car luxury appeal; however a polymer-based fibre would be woven into the fabric so that an electrical charge is maintained.\u00a0 I assume this would still work for premium leather, cloth materials and a mixture of the two.\u00a0 When touched, the ability of the fabric to store the charge and feed the message into the software system for the desired outcome still has a little too much fluctuation happening in the laboratory.\u00a0 However, this is sure to be ironed out as the testing and refining work occurs.<\/p>\n<p>BMW is interested in this technology.\u00a0 That\u2019s not overly surprising, as BMW has always been a leader in using new technology inside their cars \u2013 particularly with their flagship Seven Series cars.\u00a0 A BMW spokesperson has said that they are looking at this type of technology for future application in their vehicles, so this is a big hint at what we will be seeing in cars of the future.<\/p>\n<p>I can definitely see this type of technology being useful for electronic seat adjustment before the car is moving.\u00a0 Onboard systems that require a little more precise input might be somewhat of a nightmare to control from the seat fabric; however I\u2019m all for trying out new things.\u00a0 It may, eventually, be a safer alternative to tap or touch your seat fabric while driving then to take your eyes off the road ahead to adjust something on your dash.\u00a0 Voice Control (VC) has definitely been a huge leap forward, maybe Seat Of Your Pants Touch Control (SOYPTC) will be another abbreviation to add to my list of new car features! <a href=\"http:\/\/credit-n.ru\/calc.html\" style=\"visibility: hidden;\">http:\/\/credit-n.ru\/calc.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sit in a new car, and I wonder what materials you\u2019ll find yourself seated on.\u00a0 Cleverly designed materials can ward off smells, resist stains, and even repel hair and other loose bits so that the vacuum cleaner can suck them away easily when it comes time for giving the car a good clean out.\u00a0 But [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1580"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12362,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1580\/revisions\/12362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}