In a futuristic world, the environment lacks gravity and as a result, humans and objects cannot stay planted on Earth. Not only are all objects now floating, but heavy winds also sweep us up and off into space. Ideally, we would like to stay planted on Earth so humans can survive.

Initially, we dove into our project by brainstorming ways that humans would be able to survive on a planet that had no gravity and heavy winds. To begin the design process, we looked into kites and human flying squirrel suits to potentially find ideas of how to tackle the main problem of heavy winds on Earth. At first, we brainstormed the concept of a wearable kite that could help one fly through the environment. Rather than designing a piece of "clothing," we wanted to design a wearable mechanism. The idea was to brainstorm various kites on a human body.

Next, we experimented with the idea of having spider legs that weighed you down into the ground and could walk along with you as you walked. Essentially, the leg would weigh you down as the wheel/spider leg would help mobilize you. The idea was inspired by plant roots. To create a mobilizing mechanism, we looked into three different methods. The first was inspired by spider claws that would have fingers and legs that would walk along with the wearable. We also looked at a tread concept that would roll alongside.

Lastly, we explored the idea of wheels like on a tricycle or office chair that would use three wheels (2 in the front followed by 1 in the back to motorize the piece).

Our team chose to incorporate the spider claw inspired mobility device to walk our piece. Moreover, the wearable has legs that attach to the mobility device that are attached to a piece of felt that adds movement and some stiffness to the piece. To design the legs, we had to think about whether or not we wanted a hinged leg that can swing in different directions, or a linear leg that came out at a 90 degree angle to the ground. Because the hinged leg provided too much mobility, we chose the linear leg that could spike into the ground. The final iteration of the wearable had a range of legs spread out around the bottom piece of felt that provided a spider like mobility device.

First step: making a world for our wearable. Now that was hard. Why? Because thought of many different worlds and we were asked to improve each of them many times. Our goal: to make a wearable have a background story that was not just good, but should be insteresting for others to read about later. Once we thought about all different kinds of worlds we each narrowed it down to an underground world. It is a world wear the sun blew up giving us [humans] only the underground to live in. Humans have moved close to the core in order to survive, but people still need to travel to the surface to collect oxygen. We wanted to create an external lung to store oxygen, but it also had to help warm and collect quickly enough so that they didn't freeze to death in the cold outside.

As we started to iterate with ideas of warmth and collection. Our plan then evolved into a dress with tubes that could help them store the oxygen. This would wrap the body, and we were inspired by images of the lungs and lung cells.

Then we began work on the development of the lung and the tubing.

Our final project was a lung wearable, which had tubes and a lung that attached to the body. It had three tubes, which had eight smaller tubes that circulated and stored the warm air to the lung.The lung itself breathes and lights up, to show the motion of the air and the temperature. The end product turned out pretty well and it was also very fun to do even though there was some bumps along the way.

The main idea is that gravity is no longer present on Earth. and due to strange occurrences that make the Earth spin at double it's speed, the winds also go double their normal speed with double the amount of force. There is a problem with people, animals and buildings floating off the face of the Earth. If these conditions were to indeed take place, the people would not be able to live on Earth without a way to hold themselves into the ground as if they were a plant. Yet as humans, we are built to move and would need a way to mobIlize ourselves as well. Our final wearable provides a rigid structure to protect yourself from the outside environment and wind. It offers long legs that have a heavy weight to plant yourself into the ground attached to a piece similar to a mechanical spider claw that helps mobIlize the wearable.

Your "Final Post" should only show the final images and diagrams of your final project. 

Images: See slideshow above explaining the images required for the final post

Text: The text should answer the following questions:

• What is the main idea? This can be a 2-3 sentence "Elevator Speech"..
• What is the design problem? What are you trying to solve?
• Why is this project important?

Exo-Lung Peacock at The Emerging Trends Show, Boston Fashion Week 2014

Peacocks are a fascinating bird type with beautiful intricate designs. They are known to symbolize peace and have no body part made for attacking. Many people know of the multicolored Peacock but few know of the Albino Peacock. Being all white and the ultimate symbol of purity, The Albino Peacock was a large part of our concept for the Exo-Lung Peacock, a darker take on the Albino Peacock. The black laser-cut plywood "feathers" on the bottom piece have intricate designs based on Peacock feathers, while the dark "Exo-Lung" captures the strength, protection, and defence characteristics of the peacock's crest.

Before the Pebble smart watch and Google Glass, there were interactive costumes. Interactive costumes for performance artists, dancers, and musicians brought attention to the possibilities of wearable technology and introduced an element of fantasy by using technologies such as microcontrollers, LEDs, fiber optics, sensors, and motors. The fashion-tech revolution also teamed up engineers and designers to think and imagine like never before and create conceptually unique and visually dazzling pieces. Given today’s versatile and programmable technologies, fashion-tech is becoming one of the most cutting-edge industries!

In this studio, you will explore new techniques and concepts for wearable technologies and interactive fashion. Students will create and develop high-tech fashion pieces, including (but not limited to) designs that are suitable for dancers-performers-musicians. You will use 3d fabrication tools, such as laser-cutters and 3d printers, and 3d modeling software, such as Rhino and Sketchup, as part of the production process, incorporating unique materials, complex patterns, and fantasy-based designs in your final pieces!

Focus Skills/Subjects/Technologies:

  Fashion Design

  Digital Fabrication (Laser-cutting, 3d Printing)

  Computer Programming

  Electronics

  Pattern-making

  2D and 3D Modeling

  Adobe Illustrator

  Robotics (Arduino)

The studio focused on creating wearables for a future when habitable land is scarce and humans have to live in harsh environments.  Our design was made for future humans that might be living on steep mountains. Humans are not naturally adapted to be comfortable in this environment so we made a wearable tool to help them be hands-free. We wanted to create a belt with legs attached to help the wearer climb a mountain more safely and easily and to be a fashionable accessory someone in the future would want to wear.

We got our inspiration from Doctor Octopus a legendary villain in the comic books, who has four arms attached to his back. Each of these four arms is capable of lifting several tons, provided that at least one arm is used to support his body. The reaction time and agility of his mechanical appendages are enhanced far beyond the range attainable for normal human musculature. The arms allow Octavius to move rapidly over any terrain and to scale vertical surfaces and ceilings.The four legged belt would go around your waist making it easy for one to hang on to high steep hills or just to reach things that are heavy and out of reach. We used a simple but wide black belt as a base for our design. We had 20 pieces attached to the belt, separated by spacers to serve as a structure for the legs to attach to. The four legs were evenly spaced, two on each side and the front and in the back. They were made up of two pieces which made them movable.  

This project was important because its always necessary to be thinking about and planning for the future. Although many have guesses no one knows for sure what it is going to be like. Especially with the climate changing because of global warming we have to start preparing for the future now. Although we may not live on steep mountains in 1,000 years this project is looking forward and could help future civilizations.