Innosummer project 2/2010: Wearable Computing

Background and Motivation
Wearable computing is one of the future trends, where development in the areas such as smart materials, miniaturization, sensor systems and flexible displays will open new opportunities. While these technologies are still emerging, we can now look at creative ways to use the currently available components. This project is an exploratory hands-on project which aims to demonstrate what we can do now with creativity and existing, everyday technology.

Project Goal
The goal of the project is to innovate creative wearable computing items (e.g. integrated on t-shirts, hats, sunglasses, shoes), and build them with existing technical components. In addition to utilizing electronics kits, the material can be extracted from toys, legos, Christmas lights, game boards, etc. – what ever you may find useful. The resulting demonstrators can be useful but they can be also be purely fun – let your creativity rule.

Desired skills/competencies
The students should have creative minds, positive can-do spirit, and earlier hands-on experience on building things – whether it is hacking electronics or playing with Mindstorm kits.

Development tools, environments and standards
The students can decide what kits and components to use within the given budget frame (estimated to be a few hundreds euro).

Time period
The project constitutes full-time work for the project team between 24.5 - 31.8.2010.

Interaction between stakeholder and project team
The work will mainly be done at the Demola 'office' in Tampere, Finlayson. There will be regular meetings with the company partner and the team members. There will also be other forms of communication and guidance available to the team. The team will report the work by writing a team blog on the Demola website.

Support (supervision & financial)
Demola staff will supervise the reports and by the end of each month the team will also write a one page summary of the reported project actions, methods used, implemented software, and results.

How to apply for Innosummer
It's possible to apply by April 11th. Further information on www.demola.fi/innosummer2010

Game Over

Submitted by esprite on Tue, 31/08/2010 - 11:52

The project is now finished, and you can take a look at our showcase here!

esprite's blog
Login or register to post comments

Blinking Lights & Sleepless Nights

Submitted by esprite on Fri, 27/08/2010 - 08:23

The final presentations are now over, and it's fair to say every single one of them were SUPER AWESOME!

Light Steps Ahead

Submitted by esprite on Tue, 10/08/2010 - 07:36

Today's company meeting made me feel relieved. Even though we're not going to end up with as many prototypes as we originally wanted, Arto was happy and confident that this is going to go cool anyway. We're just going to focus on the stuff to do, and hope that it will get us where we want.

Tic-Tac-Toc Goes the Clock

Submitted by esprite on Tue, 03/08/2010 - 11:53

Our second hardware prototype has started quite well, actually. During the last few days, we've been busy sewing electronics to clothes, something that one would expect from a project like this. We've learned quite a bit from the work we've done so far, and hopefully this will help us achieve more quality stuff in the following weeks we have left.

esprite's blog
Login or register to post comments
Read more

Wearable Awesomeness

Submitted by esprite on Thu, 22/07/2010 - 13:35

We're currently finalizing our first hardware prototype, the navigation cap. At its core, it's a baseball cap with a compass. The project has been very interesting to work with and we have thought of a number of different ways of utilising this product in different user scenarios.

First demo almost done looking for next one

Submitted by alhonsal on Wed, 21/07/2010 - 11:33

We have almost finished the first demo we only need few lines of code and some polishing. There are few tweaks that we might yet do if we have enough time but for now well concentrate on next project the gaming shirt.

more to follow.

we got something done yay

Submitted by alhonsal on Mon, 05/07/2010 - 13:58

worked really hard thru last thursday to friday afternoon but it was worth it got our first prototypes user interface to demoable condition and people really liked it.

We also got some new and interesting ideas what to do as other innosummer projects. These new ideas are quite cool and interesting and also quite doable so hand in dirt!