Sketch 2 Ideations

With the course shifted into wearables we have bee exploring soft circuits and brainstorming ideas for what to build for the next project. Our 3 favorite ideas are detailed below (and modeled by Jaques the embarassed wearables scale dude.)

Fiber-optic hair:

The first options involves threading fiber-optic strands into hair-extensions or wigs which will be lit by RGB LED's embedded in the hair.                         

     These hair lights will be connected to an arduino board and an accelerometer sewn into a sleeve garment that tracks the direction of movement and sends that info to the red, green and blue variables of the LED, thus changing the color of the hair depending on the wearers motion. An additional touch sensor placed in the fingertips of the sleeve's glove allows us to track human contact with the user and use this data to flare the brightness of the LED's when the user comes into contact with other people.A secondary option with the execution of the lit hair is to use a dreadlock wig where we can embed led's into the thick cords of hair along with the fiber-optic clusters so that we could augment the thin strands of light with clusters and points of light scattered throughout the hair.

Fuzzy Night-Friend

Inspired during a brainstorm session that was originally focused on coming up with alternatives to flash-lights and night-lights for children. This wearable option places a comforting, fuzzy companion on the shoulder of the wearer as part of a scarf or shawl. Light sensors in the shawl detect when the user moves into a dark area and the fuzzy creature on the shoulder responds to the dark space by lighting up and emitting a comforting, purring vibration. This comforting presence is further augmented by the interaction of the user petting, or rubbing the plush creature to let it know the user is ok, at which point it will quiet down and simply provide light.

Personal Space Protection Clothes

The final option was for a line of clothing that reacted to the user's discomfort at loud noises or personal space violations by becoming larger or more threatening in shape. This was inspired by the way that various animals change their body when threatened such as raised hackles, fluffed up feathers, stiffened muscles and other actions to make themselves seem larger and more intimidating. The clothing would express its users discomfort in similar ways, inflating around the shoulders and neck, thickening arms, or possibly involving expanding feathered collars.