Haptic perception and enhancement of the interactive textile XR experience

The contribution outlines the developments of the first twelve months of progress in project "Advanced virtual tools for digital acquisition and visual/haptic XR interaction for textile industry” developed under the MICS partnership and specifically those clustered within Spoke 1. The resulting work aims to extend the possibilities offered by digital tools to make them applicable in strategic areas of Italian craftsmanship, which are currently entirely analogue and artisanal. This objective represents a significant challenge because the target sectors, namely furniture and fashion, exhibit complex dynamics, and compressed development timelines, and involve actors with highly refined technical skills and sensitivities, which are extremely difficult to replicate and satisfy. On the contrary, digital tools, due to their dematerialised nature, allow for a drastic reduction in the resources expended in the iterative processes typical of artisanal methods. Therefore, this experimental research is founded at the intersection of the two worlds described, aiming to identify the boundary between what can be significantly simplified and virtualised in the textile world and what must remain analogue and exclusively within the domain of specialists.