Our project is a mobile prosthetic that stimulates contralateral movement in the arms, training the forearms to mimic the natural human gait. 

The Armomat is a portable prosthetic which forces one arm to move back when the other is pushed forward, and vice versa. We created this project for a person named Joe, who suffered a traumatic brain injury when he was 18 years old, and has very little control over his right arm. He told us that he had trouble maintaining his balance when walking due to the fact that his left arm does not perform the natural human gait, as he cannot control it; because of this, Joe has to hold his weak arm with the arm he has control over, and we wanted to create something that would assist him. After two very work intensive weeks, my partner and I created several different iterations of methods that would help Joe walk normally, and after encountering countless issues, we created the Armomat.

In this studio we were tasked with creating moveable wearables for both able and disable bodied dancers. These wearables were meant to express sometime of physical or emotional trait that was personal to them in an abstract and unique way.

The dancer my team worked with was Meredith. In our interview we uncovered many different pieces of her story. However, her belief that dance was the closest thing to flight inspired us most. Once she talked about going up for jumps and feeling like she wouldn't come back down, we decided to create a wearable that would open up to the sky in someway. After experimenting around with different materials, we finally ended up with a skirt made out of vertical arced panels that opened up in an inside out umbrella-type way when she lifted her arms. These panels were all held together by strips of elastic to allow not only an up and down motion, but also a wave as well. Our final piece is made out of acrylic and 3D printed parts to attach the panels on to. We were very pleased to see how its simplistic design was able to achieve such an interesting effect.