Your touch powers my heart. Version 2 (or) Wearing my heart on my sleeve.

Concept: A shirt that responds to its wearer making physical contact with other individuals, representing the emotional charge of contact in a visual way by firing lights rapidly up the arm and across the wearer’s body and face. The lights will pulse in representation of the beating of the wearer’s heart starting out quite fast at the initial contact before slowing to a more reasonable beat. When contact is terminated the light will continue its pulse for a time at a slower speed as the shirt calms down before finally turning itself back off. Additional representation may come in the form of vibration/shivering that will either shake/move the shirt visually or(preferably) transfer part of the feeling to the person being touched.

Materials:
- A shirt that we have already begun to sew.
- The conductive thread used in the sewing.
- A large collection of LED’s (white, red, blue light in white casing or other cool color)
- Possibly a capacitive touch sensor.
- Soft Pressure Sensor
- Small vibration motors or servos.
- Wire Ribs.
-Possibly some fiber-optic strands to spread and diffuse the points of light in some parts of the shirt.
- An Arduino Diecemila, a 9v battery and some wires

Technical Specification:
Analog pins 0 and 1 on the arduino are to connect to touch and pressure sensors sewn into a glove and the shoulder of a shirt.

When a touch is read by the glove sensor LED’s light up in a quick cascade starting from the forearm closest to the point of contact and spreading up the arm, shoulder, collar and chest. The LED’s begin to pulse quickly at this point, reflecting the first emotional charge of the contact before slowing to a more normal pace. After contact is lost the lights will continue to pulse at a lower rate for a time before going out.

The pressure sensors are sewn into the shoulders of the shirt and are meant to read less intentional and less welcome contact. When the shoulder sensors read contact the lights near the shoulder flare briefly before quickly going out. These contacts are counted by the arduino and if enough hits are recorded in a short time the flare of lights crosses the full shoulders more insistently, blinking and staying on for a longer time. In addition to the light, small vibration motors can be set into the shoulder near the pressure sensor, delivering a vibration warning back to the person making contact with the wearer.

Space Requirement: Nothing of note. A body small enough to wear the shirt and glove and enough control of light to be able to see the shirt in a dim to dark environment.

Timeline - Weekly Plan
Monday Nov. 29: Handing in project plan
Sunday Dec. 5: Lighting re-sewn and reprogrammed, initial prototype of form (neck piece), Fiberoptic prototyping, Research done for paper
Wednesday Dec. 8: Rough draft of Research Paper


Research Questions:
- Body contact and gestures, and what they mean - what kinds of emotions do certain body contact gestures pertain to?
- Boundaries between comfortable vs. uncomfortable

Conceptual Research:
(Paper: Touch Communicates Distinct Emotions - Matthew J. Hertenstein and Dacher Keltner) http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~keltner/publications/hertenstein.2006.pdf
- “Twelve emotion words were displayed serially to the encoder on sheets of paper in a randomized order. The encoder was instructed to think about how he or she wanted to communicate each emotion and then to make contact with the decoder’s bare arm from the elbow to the end of the hand to signal each emotion, using any form of touch he or she deemed appropriate.” The decoder was asked to match from a list of 13 possible emotions to the gestures. The study shows that (top 3 common gestures in order):

• Hitting, Squeezing, Trembling = Anger
• Trembling, Squeezing, Shaking = Fear
• Swinging, Shaking, Lifting = Happiness
• Stroking, Squeezing, Lifting = Sadness
• Pushing, Lifting, Tapping = Disgust
• Squeezing, Lifting, Shaking = Surprise
• Shaking, Tapping, Pushing = Embarrassment
• Pulling, Lifting, Stroking = Envy
• Shaking, Lifting, Squeezing = Pride
• Stroking, Finger Interlocking, Rubbing = Love
• Shaking, Lifting, Squeezing = Gratitude
• Patting, Stroking, Rubbing = Sympathy

(Paper: Meanings of Intimacy in Cross and Same-Sex Friendships - by Michael Monsour)
http://spr.sagepub.com/content/9/2/277.full.pdf+html
- Lower proportions of males and higher proportions of females in same-sex friendships mentioned physical contact as a meaning of intimacy
- Intimacy to those in same-sex friendships mean when they see each other, they greet each other with a handshake, hug, or occasionally a kiss on the cheek
- Touch is considered as intimacy across all friendship groups, but more so for females
- It is suggested that females in cross-sex friendships equate physical contact with intimacy although their friend is not a romantic partner, they are still a member of the opposite sex. Males may not equate physical touch to intimacy because the contact is not sexual in nature.


Scenario
- Setting: At night, going to a party and meeting a new acquaintance.
- Interactions:

• Being jostled on the skytrain (crowded)
• Holding hands with someone

On the skytrain, Carol is standing because there are no seats. She is going to a party where she’ll meet a few of her friends. It’s reasonably roomy on the skytrain until she gets to Broadway Station. At this point, the skytrain becomes overcrowded, people jostling Carol and invading her personal space. The sensors in her shoulders and back are repeatedly bumped and cause the lights around her neck and face to turn blue, signaling her discomfort.

Carol exits the skytrain at Granville Street Station. The lights around her neck do not deactivate for a up to 30 seconds after she has left the stressful situation.
She walks towards the party and upon arriving, is greeted by her friend to introduces her to other friends. Due to Carol’s friendly contact with her friend Jillian, her suit lights up gently with white and pink around the face. She is comfortable with her friend Jillian. When George is a new acquaintance and and asks her to dance. She is pleased and her suit responds with the lights pulsing gently up her arm when her hand is taken. As long as her hand is held, the lights will sustain and will stay lit up for a fraction of the time longer after her hand is released. Once the lights start to fade, they will slowly fade down her arm from the neck until only her wrist is lit before going out.

Sketch two: With Images

For our sketch two, we wanted to move from a defense suit more towards a sensual form. After some testing, we came up with a more sculptural form based on a set of wireframes under the "skin" of the suit. These wires will eventually be able to move depending on a proximity sensor (most likely).


After completing the wireframe, we sewed in the LEDs that are controlled by our home-made touch sensor and programmed Arduino. The lights were sewn in 4 sets up the left arm. When the user touches skin with their hands, the circuit in their gloved hand would be completed and would turn on the lights in in sequence. The lights will then slowly pulse and spread up the arm.

Sketch two

For sketch two, we moved forwards with our ideas by combining several of them into one that we can push forward for our next project. We took the original idea of the defense suit and moved it towards creating something a little more sensual. We took the idea of communicating through color and light from our hair light idea, similiar to how birds of paradise would communicate, and integrated it into the suit in order to move away from the idea of the suit being defensive to one of it being attractive.

This week consisted of mostly focusing on the light and touch sensor and the possible shape of the suit. The light for the suit was designed to spread from the point of contact with another person, up the arm and towards the heart of the user. For this iteration, we used red lights; but, for further iterations, we may want to look into using white or blue lights.

These images show how the lights were placed in the suit and how we wanted them to be wired in order for the light to spread up the arm.

Sketch Two Ideation Concepts

For this week we spent time developing the ideas we would present in lab. We narrowed it down to three concepts, all of which have the idea of nature worked into a piece of wearable technology.

Hair Lights

The first idea is of a method of communication involving light and and movement. We focused on the concept of using movement and color, like certain animals use them, for communication. Particularly, we wanted to communicate joy. Our piece for this concept is a wig that reacts to the user's movements; that is, it reacts to their speed and quality of movement as well as to their interactions with others while dancing. The hair lights up different colors depending on this data that would be caught from accelerometers attached to points over their body. When the user comes into contact with another person, a touch sensor located on their hand or arm, if activated, will cause their hair to flare a bright warm color.

The actual hair will be made either into a wig with fiber optic extensions or made with embedded LEDs. Another option as well is for actual hair extensions that could clip onto the user's own hair. We also are looking into using El Wire to create different lighting effects.

Furry Shoulder Friend

The next proposal was for a small furry companion for people afraid of the dark. The fuzzy friend would be attached to a scarf-hood piece. The light sensor at the top of the hood would detect when the lights became dim and would cause the furry companion to begin to shiver gently on the wearer's shoulder. In order to comfort the creature, the user would gently pet the companion until it began purring, indicating pleasure and contentment. By doing this, not only will the furry friend be comforted, but the user, reacting to the needs of something else, will also have the feeling of being comforted as well.

The sensors involved in this idea would include a light sensor and a touch sensor. It would also include a mechanism to produce the vibrations of the creature and something to make the purring noise.

Defensive Body Suit

Our third idea was to create a body suit that would react defensively, similar to how an animal would react to a threat. The suit was designed, however, not to look like an animals per se, but instead more sculptural. Taking inspiration from BMW's Gina car, we wanted something sensual and powerful looking. Our suit changes its shape from a standard long sleeve shirt to one that is almost "inflated" looking, using wires controlled by motors under the skin of the suit. The wires on the back would lift to raise the back and shoulders of the wearer while the motors on the arms would compress, forcing the wires there to bend upwards. The rib cage as well would be emphasized through the use of wires, making the

user appear larger. This would all happen in response to two things: A sudden loud noise that becomes unceasing and an invasion of the user's "personal bubble". These two things together would trigger the suit's defense mechanism. If the suit was going off all the time though, the user ma become frustrated so, by making a simple hand motion that touches a sensor on the wrist, the users can restrict the suit.

First Wearable Things

Our First Wearable sensor was designed into a garment that detected the amount of light in the area and effected a set of LEDs embedded into a shirt. When less light is detected in the surroundings by the light sensor located on the person's chest, the blinking lights start blinking more rapidly. This is to simulate the increase in heart rate for a person who may be afraid of the dark.