ClothFace: Battery-Free User Interface Solution Embedded into Clothing and Everyday Surroundings

This paper introduces ClothFace, a passive ultrahigh frequency (UHF) radio frequency identification (RFID) -based user interface solution, which can be embedded into clothing and into our everyday surroundings. The user interface platform consists of RFID tags, each of which has a unique ID. All the tags are initially readable to an external RFID reader. A specific tag can be switched off by covering it with a hand, which change can then be used as a digital input to any connected device. Because of the used passive UHF RFID technology, there is no need for embedded energy sources, but the interface platform gets all the needed energy from the external RFID reader. In this study, two test setups were created to an office environment: For the Body Test, the interface was integrated into a cotton shirt and into an item. For the Table Test, the interface was integrated into a wooden table. A gamelike testing software was created for both setups and two male test subjects tested the platform. The achieved results were very promising: success rates of 99–100 % and 94–98 % were reached in the Body Test and in the Table Test, respectively. Based on these promising preliminary results, we can envision the employment of ClothFace for developing multi-modal interfaces that can provide on-body gestural controls in body-based serious game applications.