Jack Forman, Amanda Shayna Ahteck, Hiroshi Ishii, Neil Gershenfeld, and Megan Hofmann. 2026. KnitARobo: Industrial Machine Knitting of Electromechanical Textile Interfaces with Liquid Crystal Elastomer Fibers. In The 39th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST ’26), November 02–05, 2026, Detroit, MI, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 14 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/383

Abstract

Electromechanical textiles combine the unique properties of controllable shape-changing materials with the affordances of conventional fabrics. However, most actuation mechanisms require bespoke fabrication techniques incompatible with mass manufacturing. We present KnitARobo, a technique for automatically machine-knitting liquid-crystal elastomer textile actuators. Parameterized variations in the knitting pattern produce various morphologies. By characterizing these actuators and demonstrating three morphing garments, we demonstrate the value of our three guiding principles for electromechanical textile design: clothing-centric design, compatibility with mass manufacturing, and integration of controllable actuation.