Embrogami: Shape-Changing Textiles with Machine Embroidery

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Machine embroidery is a versatile technique for creating custom and entirely fabric-based patterns on thin and conformable textile surfaces. However, existing machine-embroidered surfaces remain static, limiting the interactions they can support. We introduce Embrogami, an approach for fabricating textile structures with versatile shape-changing behaviors. Inspired by origami, we leverage machine embroidery to form finger-tip-scale mountain-and-valley structures on textiles with customized shapes, bistable or elastic behaviors, and modular composition. The structures can be actuated by the user or the system to modify the local textile surface topology, creating interactive elements like toggles and sliders or textile shape displays with an ultra-thin, flexible, and integrated form factor. We provide a dedicated software tool and report results of technical experiments to allow users to flexibly design, fabricate, and deploy customized Embrogami structures. With four application cases, we showcase Embrogami’s potential to create functional and flexible shape-changing textiles with diverse visuo-tactile feedback.