This is a textile computer capable of pneumatic digital logic, onboard memory, and user interaction and demonstrate its ability to control textile-based assistive devices in response to user commands.

Despite the tremendous potential of textiles as a robust and versatile medium for building robots and actuators that can be integrated directly into users’ clothing, embedded logic controllers made of textiles have not yet been developed, precluding the emergence of smart, fully textile-based robotic wearables.

The logic-enabled textiles can be mass produced using existing processes and are resilient enough to withstand everyday use, potentially enabling future generations of comfortable, low-cost, and electronics-free robotic wearables for assisting the nearly one billion people worldwide currently living with disabilities.