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Clothing that responds to danger, shoes that automatically loosen and tighten, robotic slugs and culturally friendly chopsticks – all are inventions of students in Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT).

They’ll be among more than 50 student projects on display on Saturday, Feb. 5, at the SFU Surrey campus from 2:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. for SIAT’s spring showcase and competition.

Faculty, alumni, and industry professionals will critique the projects and select the Best of Show in each of six categories. Here’s a preview:

En Vella

Students have designed a way to look good and feel safe at the same time. enVella, a transforming dress that envelopes the user, was inspired by natural world examples of physical transformation in response to a perceived threat.

Likening it to the expandability of a puffer fish, or the surprise unfrilling of the frill-neck lizard, enVella literally fans out, providing a screening effect around the upper body.

It features four folded fabric fans, ironed together with a heavy fusible interface and sewn onto a dress. The fans are triggered by the combination of two sensor inputs controlled by heart rate and temperature.

If the wearer’s heart rate is greater than the average heart rate, the fans open in sequence along the upper body. They retract when the heart rate is again normal.

Perfect Fit

Imagine the convenience if, as they did for Marty in Back to the Future, your shoelaces could tighten and loosen themselves depending on your activity.

With their project Perfect Fit, students designed a pair of self-tightening and self-loosening shoes that can be integrated into everyday life while improving the comfort and performance of movements.

“The shoe understands the intentions of the wearer by responding to a variety of human kinesthetic motions, and automatically adjusts tightness accordingly,” says Sophia Yip.

Students first studied the way people walk and run, and then adapted a small motor and control panel that calculates ground contact to a pair of sneakers.

The shoe first tightens as pressure is applied while standing. When walking, it tightens further. When running the shoe would be at its tightest to offer the best performance. To remove, a simple crossing of the leg and tilting the foot forward loosens the laces for easy take off.

Heart on a sleeve – wearable technologies

These high-tech projects started with a needle and thread. The sleeves of specially designed shirts light up when the hand is touched. An example: conductive fabric is sewn onto the fabric near the hand and is connected to a power source and circuits at the back of the shirt. Applied pressure completes the circuit and the lights turn on.

Slugrobots

Technology and nature come together in a family of slug robots. Students used technology to recreate movements of real slugs and caterpillars, along with sounds as created by birds and bats, and then designed their visually intriguing technoslugs to be visible throughout, inspired by translucent fish.

The creatures, about 30 cm in length, move blindly but speak to each other using infrared emitters and receptors. When they come in range of each other they match the tempo of emitting noise. Their only visual cue to other animals is a row of lights running down the side of their bodies – which flash a matching heart beat.

Chopstix

They’re great utensils but chopsticks are also tools for stepping into Asian culture, says student Emily Ip. And for those who want to step more easily into that culture, Ip and a team of SIAT students have re-designed them into a modulated single, two-pronged instrument that can also be easily disconnected.Connecting the chopsticks not only helps anchor the hand position more quickly but carries forward the traditional value of being connected as a whole, Ip says.

Bulthaup n1 - interactive kitchens for National Geographic explorers

Photojournalists could truly take everything – AND the kitchen sink – to global assignments with a concept like SIAT students’ Bulthaup n1 interactive kitchen system. Modeled after the modern Bulthaup design, the portable kitchen provides storage and stove systems and a techno-cutting board that weighs and equally proportions the food. It’s designed with National Geographic in mind.

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For an update on the event see  http://www.siat.sfu.ca/news/2011/529/

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