You could say that this is an invisible way of protecting whole buildings, much to the thieves’ chagrin, of course. It looks like any other cloth, but will actually hold a fine web of conductive threads that are hooked up to a microcontroller which is capable of emitting warning signals whenever the fabric is cut in order to trigger an alarm.
It is also a rather tough piece of cookie, having survived tumbling around in a washing machine at 40 degrees Celsius, while being exposed to the elements for 1,000 hours at a relative humidity of 85% and a temperature of 85 degrees Celsius without missing a beat. Not only that, it was also thrown into a furnace where it was subjected to 1,000 temperature cycles ranging from minus 40 to plus 85 degrees Celsius. All the punishment mentioned, and the team behind this smart fabric claimed that it “didn’t fail once.”