The iDrink swimware line is perfect for those who want to go the beach, listen to music, and enjoy a cold and deserved beverage, but who don\’t want to get wet! The iDrink\’s photovoltaic film panels allow a fashionable fit while supplying the 6.5 volts @ 1.5 Amps needed to power a peltier junction and an iPod and keep you double cool! See you on the Jersey Shore!

Inter-human dependencies, such as the need for body warmth, can be lost in modern world technology that aims for independence and self-reliance.

These gloves are a rebellion against one aspect of self-reliant, survival technology: self-heating winter gloves. With these codependent gloves, you must hold hands in order to heat up each other\’s gloves, thereby promoting not only physical security but also emotional.

The personal range finder is an assistive device that translates physical space into a tactile input on your arm. The goal of this project was to make an affordable mobile machine that is rugged, runs off a common power supply (9volt battery) and easy to use. The range finder utilizes sonar to create a map of the surrounding physical space. This map is then translated to a scaled pressure gradient which is applied to your forearm. In this way you are able to “see” the surrounding 8 feet of space allowing for informed movement without the use of your eyes.

There were many concerns dealing with alternative navigation, the largest challenge is to make a usable translation from one sense experience to another. It is important to consider the normative motion and thought that goes into a particular sense in order to describe it correctly. If you are successful you can trigger the logical patterns that are normally linked with that sense, giving the user a much quicker learning curve. This project focused on the sensations that are used to navigate physical space. I became aware of a linear building sensation that is employed when describing ones location in space. There has to be a constant reference of change in order to “perceive” a space. From this observation I designed an interface that applies pressure in a linear motion according to the distance of an object from you. This gives a simple straightforward interpretation of space that can be utilized without any prior explanation.

In terms of the physical construction I tried to use an approach that could be as versatile as possible, leaving room for easy changes of use. This translated into a design for maximum simplicity and flexibility, so it could be used with an arm mount or it could be front mounted to a shirt and used for crowd navigation. This device could be utilized for assistive tech or a toy application.

an alternative vanity mirror in which the user can \’change\’ her/his own hairstyle and the ambience by selecting different music tracks.

Cities are crowded places. Ever since the industrial revolution, mass migration to urban spaces has led to increasing problems of overpopulation and related social disorders. On an individual level, overcrowding can lead to or exacerbate agoraphobia, part of a growing problem of general urban anxiety. Responses to this problem — lack of space, lack of privacy — vary, ranging from physical agility (navigating quickly through crowded spaces) to insensitivity (talking loudly on a mobile phone as if in the privacy of one’s own home) to outright violence. What these responses tend to have in common is an element of denial: the individual refuses to acknowledge and analyze the import of the restriction of her space.

Urban Sonar attempts to address this problem by allowing the user to record her personal space over an extended period of time, during which she may move through varied environments that cause different levels of anxiety. The user wears a jacket with four ultrasonic sensors that measure her proximity to other people and objects to her left, right, front and back. The sensors communicate with a Java-enabled mobile phone, which records these four proximity values along with the user’s heartrate. The data can then be uploaded to a server for playback at a later time, allowing the user to consider, with a degree of critical distance, her spatial experience over the course of fixed period of time. Playback consists of an accelerated visual representation, from a birds-eye view, of a constantly shifting geometric representation of the user’s space as it fluctuated during the recorded period.

The goal of the project is to allow (or perhaps force) the user to address and come to terms with the limitations on personal space that are an inherent part of the urban experience. Our hope is that by examining this data, the user can gain a better understanding of her daily experience and begin to come to terms with, and attempt to alleviate, her urban anxiety.