a wash basket 14 and an impeller 16 respectively in order to measure cloth motion the sensing systems 110 may include one or more sensors 112 microcontrollers 114 communication devices batteries and antennae signals from the sensing systems are communicated to a data acquisition and control computer 20 via a combination of wired and wireless protocol the data acquisition and control computer 20 is configured to record the signals from the sensing systems and has the ability to issue commands to the sensing systems in the washer to affect the cloth cleaning solution mixture in some way or to effect the washer operation in some way as one of skill in the art is aware any number of sensing systems may be provided in order to accomplish various measurements in a washing machine one or more of the sensing systems may be provided without changing the scope of the invention any necessary electronic equipment may be installed in small spaces or non intrusive areas such as within towers impeller blades or other protrusions alternately it may be possible in some cases to route wiring out of the chamber to small remote computers or to mechanical contacts that enable communication between the sensors and actuators and the data acquisition and control system another embodiment of a complete measurement system is shown in fig3 and 4 in this embodiment frictional forces between cloth items and the impeller surface are measured contact sensors can be used to measure the times and locations at which a pre determined u201c target cloth u201d comes in contact with the inner surface of the wash chamber in one embodiment of a contact measurement system 30 as shown in fig5 the contact sensors are comprised of a plurality of discrete copper strips.