This interactive wearable project incorporates the bionic elements inspired by bats to inquire an alternative method that reflects the personal space. The garment features a custom-designed wing, an ultrasonic sensor, two servo motors, and the Adafruit Circuit Playground Express. Upon detecting an audience stepping within the personal space of the wearer, the ultrasonic sensor triggers the wing to extend, serving as a defensive sign.
The study of humans’ use of their personal spaces, also known as Proxemics, examines how individuals navigate and define the physical and psychological boundaries within their immediate surroundings.
Anthropologist Edward T. Hall classified the levels of personal spaces in a bubble diagram, reflecting the distances at which individuals feel comfortable interacting with others.
Being intruded on by personal space invaders is a shared experience of humans. Because of social protocol, explicit verbal or physical response to the discomfort of close talkers is regarded as impolite. This project speculates on the possibility for humans breaking the social protocol by wearing a bionic design. For example, bats are able to echo-locate to determine their distance within their surroundings .
Echolocation
Bats are able to emit ultrasonic calls that bounces off their surroundings as echos, enabling them to know the distance, size, and even texture of objects. Similar to echolocation, an ultrasonic sensor can send out ultrasonic waves, and reflect back to the receiver to determine the distance of the objects.
Wings Structure
As the nocturnal animal, bat activities at night are often mysterious due to its aerodynamic high-speed flight. Their agile bone structure and translucent membrane (plagiopatagium) reduce the overall weight. Due to the technical constraints of micro servo motors, it is necessary to reduce the weight of the bat wing system to facilitate the lifting and extension of the wings.
Once the ultrasonic sensor detect the distance of the personal space invader, it calculates a moving average based on the last 10 readings, and maps the average distance to the servo motor angles. The servos drive the wing to extend, corresponding to the changes in the average distance.
Our aesthetics is to minimize the exposure of wires or battery packs. To do so, I drew the wiring diagram to visualize how to connect servos, Arduino, and ultrasonic sensors. Additionally, the diagram factors in two battery packs for Arduino and the servo motors.
