"Future clothing" in "Three-body" that can change images at will, perhaps without waiting

"The most exciting thing for him is the people he met along the way... Their clothes also show beautiful patterns. Everyone's style is different, and some have realistic abstractions."

In Liu Cixin's science fiction novel "Three-body", the protagonist Luo Ji hibernates for 185 years and finally wakes up in the 205th year of the crisis (Park 2211). At this time, human daily clothes can be based on the wearer's mood. Changes, changing colors, patterns, and automatically resizing:

"Luo Ji put on clothes, heard a slight squeak, the clothes slowly shrunk to the scale of the fit, and the same after putting on the pants. Shi Qian pointed to a brooch-like thing on the chest of his shirt and told Luo Ji, clothes The size can also be adjusted."

The charm of science fiction lies in the author's "whimsical" often containing a reasonable imagination of science, and we can even see the plots in some novels come true in reality. From the current development of science and technology, the "future clothing" in the "three-body" may also become such an example, perhaps we do not have to wait until 2021.

Nike shoes with automatic laces

Automatically resizing, may remind you of the shoes in the movie "Back to the Future":

This is also a 1985 science fiction movie, and 2015 is the year when the protagonist of the film crossed the "future." To pay tribute to the plot in the movie, Nike is developing a sneaker that automatically laces.

This is what Nike HyperAdapt 1.0 looks like. It has a row of small motors in the position of the shoelace holes on both sides, and is battery powered together with the sensor on the sole. The sensor will record the wearer's weight, foot and center of gravity (front and rear feet). According to the data returned by the sensor, the motor will tighten the shoelace like the spool of the fishing rod to achieve the effect of automatically tying the shoelace.

Now, the size of the sensor and battery is enough to be added to the shoes. As early as 2006, Nike introduced the Nike+ iPod kit, a small sensor that can be placed on the sole, and the iPod to record the running speed and distance.

So in theory, as long as the sensor, battery and power unit can be made small enough to be applied to the clothes, the clothes can have our unexpected functions.

Google and Levi's work: smart jackets that can navigate and control music

At this year's Google I/O conference, Google and the famous jeans brand Levi's announced that they are working together to develop a smart jacket that can already be used to get the sensor into the daily riding suit.

The jacket has a multi-touch sensor and battery in the cuff, connected via Bluetooth and a mobile phone. When you ride, you don't have to pull out your phone, you can control music playback, phone and navigation services by tapping or rotating gestures. Moreover, this jacket will also be compatible with third-party services, such as streaming music service Spotify, sports tracking application Strava and so on.

Levi Straw said that wearable devices should not be ugly wires, and the area of ​​the cuffs with sensors is “light and flexible”, which is not significantly different from normal clothes. “When washing clothes, you only need to take that part off. ."

Google and Levi's also released a promotional video:

From a technical point of view, the launch of this jacket is only a matter of time. In fact, Levi's has given a schedule for the sale: Spring 2017. However, there is a scene in the video that makes me very suspicious: the little brother riding a handsomely hangs the phone from the boss...

Flexible display screen that can be applied to clothes

In addition to the sensor, if we can make the display thin enough, we can really enjoy the "future clothing" of the human in the "three-body".

The good news is, really.

As the name implies, flexible displays are made of soft materials, variable and flexible display devices, and the combination of clothing is one of its important applications in the future.

Softwoo Technology from Shenzhen has demonstrated its flexible display with a thickness of only 0.01 mm:

And the clothes are already the place where Rouyu is considering the application. At the 2016 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2016), Rouyu showed a riding backpack with flexible electronics. The rider can operate on the strap to control the display of the rear surface of the backpack. The driving state of the pedestrian.

In April of this year, Rouyu also reached a strategic cooperation with sports goods company Li Ning. The two sides expressed their willingness to “achieve Li Ning smart sports equipment embedded with flexible display and flexible sensor”.

Looking at it now, the most important thing to do is the power unit. If we can weave a small row of motors into the clothes, then we really only need to buy one piece of clothing to achieve the effect of 10,000 pieces of clothes.