Project Proposal: Omnisc-irt (Omni-shirt)

Intention

The idea of the Omnisc-irt is that it provides the user additional awareness of their surroundings. This has multiple applications, either simply for enhanced spatial awareness or can be used by individuals who have some form of sensory disability. The idea is to have a silent way to provide some form of feedback to the user about what is happening behind them, or anything that is slightly out of view. As a person or object approaches from behind you on the left, the Omni-shirt will tighten in the area roughly corresponding to the location and distance of that person from you (tighter is closer).

Process and/or Research

The process of designing this focused mainly on trying to determine the best placement for the feedback system. It needs to be a polarized system, with the ability to control the strength of the sensory feedback mechanism. I settled on placing the feedback pads around the latissimus dorsi muscle ground and wrapping around the abdomen because those are areas which are not generally touched in day to day life. The hope is that those areas, and the way most clothing is stitched to fit, will make the wearer more aware of when the feedback system is actually functioning.

The second part of this research focused on the sensing portion. I toyed with the idea of using multiple near range sensors, such ultra sonic sensors, but decided they would provide too much noise in there measurements to make this system actually usable. I settled on the idea of using a small camera placed on the back near the collar of the shirt, and would need to use some form of Computer Vision to distinguish things moving in the environment.

Product

For the feedback pads, I decided the muscle wire would be best used here instead of some form of inflatable, as muscle wire is silent and provides enough tug to provide some form of sensory feedback. The down side to using muscle wire is that it generates a lot of heat, so wherever the muscle wire must be placed, there must also be some insulating material to prevent the wearer from being burnt. As mentioned above, the camera is mounted at the collar of the shirt on the wearer's back. Wires will run across the mid torso to power everything, and to transmit the data from the camera. There is obviously a need for large data processing with CV, so it would be easier to provide either a wireless or wired connection to the user's phone which can do the processing and feed the appropriate muscle wire response back in real time.

Reflection

From this project, I learned about how best ways to provide sensory information to people silently. I also began to develop a project which I believe will actually become a real product within the next couple of years. It seems like something a start-up company would develop as wearable tech becomes more and more common place, and possibly less expensive, although this product would be quite expensive due to the amount of muscle wire required.

Sketch Book