Welcome to the Sensory Materials Library

Sensory Materials Library (SML) is a research project at Royal College of Art, London. SML is developing an inclusive and holistic approach towards making the sensory properties of materials accessible within a materials library.

As part of the research, an AI-driven design tool, AiLoupe, is being developed within AiDLab, a collaboration between Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Royal College of Art. 

The Challenges

1

Designer’s tacit knowledge

Designers have tacit and embodied knowledge of materials which they have gathered over years of working and designing with materials. However, they often struggle to articulate and pass on this knowledge. There are no standardised ways or tools to portray and record sensory data and explain material selection at the designer’s level.

2

The current state of the material library landscape

Designers still predominately discover, source and select materials through visiting expos or shops and acquiring physical samples. If not they often they utilise online material libraries. However, these tend to only focus on objective properties of materials, such as technical and physical information like material composition. They lack more subjective information about the materials, the sensory properties and “hand feel” of the textiles materials. The current material library landscape lacks the necessary sensory data to source effectively online.

3

Textile Industry standard of digitalising material data

The textile industry has a long history of developing methods of measuring the ‘textile hand’ and the experience of textiles. However, the standard of digitalising material data is specific to quality assurance and standardisation and not towards design innovation.

Subjective testing is also time consuming and costly, involving human participants. Published research focus on narrow applications and small groups of materials, and often industry material library research remains closed source.

AiLoupe is an early stage prototype output of the research and aims to equip designers with the necessary knowledge to identify, source and select materials in the design process.  AiLoupe demonstrates the potential applications that fit within a greater research paradigm that aims to connect material research from raw materials, distributed manufacturing, branding, retail, product use, end-of-life and circular processes.

Watch the AiLoupe promotion video below:

Meet the Team

  • Prof Sharon Baurley (PI)

    Director of Materials Science Research Centre

  • Dr Elif Ozden Yenigun (Co-I)

    Senior Tutor in Textiles

  • Dr Chipp Jansen

    Senior Postdoctoral Research Associate - AI

  • Lissy Hatfield

    Research Associate - Textiles and Design

  • Oscar Tuo

    RTH Scholar

  • Henrietta Dent

    Laboratory Technician

  • Dr Bruna Petreca

    Senior RF in Human Experience & Materials

  • Dr Miriam Ribul

    Senior RF in Materials Circularity for Distributed Manufacture

Previous Team Members

  • Toto Ma

    RTH Scholar

Upcoming events

  • Future Fabric Expo

    25th - 26th June 2024

    AiLoupe will be back at FFE this summer with the latest development of the app and displaying more materials in the library to scan.

    Come and visit to try AiLoupe or discuss onboarding your materials to SML.

    Details