1.02 Advanced virtual tools for digital acquisition and visual/haptic XR interaction for textile industry

The main purpose of this project is to improve the remote collaborative design processes which characterize the world of fabrics evaluation, increasing the perceptual quality of digital textile products visualized in real-time interactive environments, both for the operators of the industrial sector and the final users. The process of digitization of fabric samples might favor the reduction of material consumption in the mid-long term, especially at the preliminary, decisional and prototyping phases. The first project branch aims to producing a series of software packages and/or scripts that perform parts of the acquisition/post-processing procedure automatically, which would decrease the level of specialization of actors/operators involved in the process of acquisition. The experimented acquisition phase will be synthesized in form of practical guidelines, applicable to different contexts, for the digitization and calibration of the outcomes, that guarantee a high perceptual fidelity for visualization purposes. The main goal of the second research path is the development of a stable configuration based on a set of mature technologies for the simulation of haptic perception. That is possible only through defining in a previous moment a protocol for converting normal maps into perceptible pulses which can be used to represent the virtual fabric texture or to substitute the haptic feedback on real objects. Finally, the definition of the informational architecture of the tissues exchange database that will be fed by the progressive acquisition, processing and conversion of future stakeholder samples.