CWI's DIS group led by Pablo Cesar has been awarded KIEM funding by NWO Humanities. The funding will go to "Project Cairo: an intelligent soft-robotic jacket". DIS will work on this project together with two partners: Borre Akkersdijk (Byborre) and Bas Overvelde (Amolf).
The purpose of project Cairo is to create an urban jacket that pushes the state-of-the-art of smart-textiles. The jacket will sense and reason about the wearer activity, profile and external conditions to trigger changes in its structure and insulation. To build it, the group will exploit new materials developed by AMOLF (soft-robotic) matter, as a way of changing the physical properties of textiles. This will be added to the proven expertise in merging sensor technology and artificial intelligence, developed by CWI, with the innovative textile design and fabrication techniques of Byborre. The team will fine tune the jacket to assist people commuting by bike, and test it with potential final users applying quantitative and qualitative methods.
The research will address questions like: can smart-textiles play a more active role in controlling our environment and can we design, build, and understand technology that goes beyond an attached sensor and becomes an integral part of the textile/fabric itself? The project will presumably take place in the period October 2017-March 2018.
DIS and Byborre already have significant research experience in the area of sensor technologies, artificial intelligence, communication networks, embedded systems, and human-computer interaction evaluation, proven by projects like:
• Sensing the speaker and the audience during a lecture in the CWI in Bedrijf
https://vimeo.com/140198523
• Designing the car interior of the future for the Volvo Design Challenge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kw6YL740Hyo
• Defining the future of clubbing during Amsterdam Dance Event 2016
https://www.redbull.tv/video/AP-1QJ3YTJCW1W11/playrooms
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