At the true core of design lies innovation, the desire to lead, to push boundaries, to convince others to follow where you want them to go.
The fashion world never halts—runway by runway across the globe, designers display their latest creations, setting the newest trends and crafting couture to astonish all. At the true core of design lies innovation, the desire to lead, to push boundaries, to convince others to follow where you want them to go.
With Paris Fashion Week just around the corner (February 28 – March 8, 2017), we’d like to nod to one designer who takes fashion to amazing new heights. Fashion designer Hussein Chalayan, in his spring 2017 fashion line entitled “Room Tone,” combined art and technology to create biosensing accessories that translate the wearer’s stress levels into moving images projected onto the wall.
And one of our very own undergraduates worked with Chalayan and his team of fashion technology designers to build this wearable tech.
Source: Carnegie Mellon University College of Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University’s Sarika Bajaj had a summer internship with Intel’s fashion technology group to design elements of Chalayan’s “Room Tone” line.
Carnegie Mellon University’s Sarika Bajaj—an undergraduate junior in electrical and computer engineering (ECE) who is currently redesigning her own independent major of study by combining ECE, mechanical engineering, and industrial design—had a summer internship in the summer of 2016, working with Intel’s fashion technology group to design elements of Chalayan’s “Room Tone” line.
Bajaj worked with Intel’s Innovation Engineer Karolina Cengija and her team to design Chalayan’s biosensing accessories. Bajaj consulted with the team to help design a pair of sunglasses that took readings like heartbeat, breathing rate, and blood pressure to monitor and interpret the model’s physiological responses to stress. These sunglasses used Bluetooth to send this information to a belt the model was wearing—a belt which then used an internal projector to display an artistic image on the wall that corresponded in real-time to the sunglasses’ biofeedback.
In addition to helping create the sunglasses, Bajaj was one of the main designers of the projection belt’s projector and lighting systems, mechanical designs, and electronic integration. In images of moving scenes such as a rope being pulled in a game of tug-o-war, a bustling crowd, and roses opening and closing in rhythm with the model’s heartbeat, the belt displayed the model’s tension using metaphorical projections on the wall as they walked down the runway.
Flip through the slideshow below to see the steps Bajaj took to create the belt.
CAD Modeling | Bajaj worked with Intel’s Innovation Engineer Karolina Cengija and her team to design Chalayan’s biosensing accessories. Bajaj consulted with the team to help design a pair of sunglasses that took readings like heartbeat, breathing rate, and blood pressure to monitor and interpret the model’s physiological responses to stress. These sunglasses used Bluetooth to send this information to a belt the model was wearing—a belt which then used an internal projector to display an artistic image on the wall that corresponded in real-time to the sunglasses’ biofeedback. In addition to helping create the sunglasses, Bajaj was one of the main designers of the projection belt’s projector and lighting systems, mechanical designs, and electronic integration. In images of moving scenes such as a rope being pulled in a game of tug-o-war, a bustling crowd, and roses opening and closing in rhythm with the model’s heartbeat, the belt displayed the model’s tension using metaphorical projections on the wall as they walked down the runway. Flip through the slideshow below to see the steps Bajaj took to create the belt, or read more about Chalayan’s “Room Tone” line.
Internal Arrangement | This is an early SolidWorks mock-up of how the inside of the belt would be arranged to fit the projector, the boards, and the optical module. The red part in the image is the projector’s main circuit board, and the black part is the main optical module of the projector. The angle at which the projector peeks out from the belt was experimented upon extensively for maximal efficiency.
Projections | Here, Intel’s Karolina Cengija measures one of the belt’s projections on the wall from a particular distance away. One of the team’s main concerns was how the projection hit the wall, as the model’s distance from and angle to the wall could affect the distortion and stretching of the image. The projector inside the belt had to be arranged at a very precise angle, for two reasons: to maximize for resilience while the model was moving, and to avoid blocking the projected image with the model’s arm.
The Inner Workings | These are the chips that went inside the belt. The projector needed an electronics board to power it, so, using an HDMI connection, Bajaj attached the projector to an Intel Compute stick, which is essentially a small computer with Bluetooth capability. This Intel Compute stick is where the sunglasses sent their biofeedback—the brain behind the image projection.
Laser Cutting Cardboard Prototypes | Once the belt was modeled in SolidWorks, Bajaj and her team created several form prototypes, such as this one, made of laser-cut cardboard. These prototypes were placed on the models to adjust for size and fit, and each iteration was tweaked slightly as the team adjusted the placement of the inner components.
3-D Printing | Once Bajaj and her team were happy with the laser-cut cardboard mock-ups, they took it to print. 3-D print, that is—by using this fast and inexpensive technology, they could see exactly how their mock-ups would appear when turned from computer model to tangible prototype.
Sketchin' | The team had brainstorming sessions to answer the question, “How can we aesthetically make the belt look smaller?” By drawing out thoughts and answering each other’s questions visually, the team was able to quickly and efficiently give feedback and get new ideas for how to address any problems the team was facing.
So Many Prototypes | Many prototypes were made before the belt could be finalized—with each iteration, the team found areas where the belt could be improved.
The Final Prototype | The final version of the belt was 3-D printed using a thermoplastic elastomer, a completely flexible material that feels similar to leather. This final belt is completely flexible, able to be bent backwards without shifting or breaking the inner contents. The electronic components slide into place along a track, and sit in the front section of the belt, leaving the sides and back free to manipulate. This prototype, the last version before the final belt could be completed, is a soft, flexible model that mimics what the final belt would be able to do. Because the electronic components slide in along a track, the electronics can be put in and taken out of different iterations, until the final belt was created.
