OmniFiber 自感应变形纺织品 by Ozgun Kilic Afsar is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2022 A' Design Award 铜奖 in 纺织品、面料、纹理、图案与织物设计 Competition Category.

铜纺织· 2022

OmniFiber 自感应变形纺织品

by Ozgun Kilic Afsar

Client: Ozgun Kilic Afsar

A' Design Award 铜奖 Winner in 纺织 Category

41,846

Verified Award Winner

Verify Award Status for #131625

Visit Site View at A' Design Award Press Release Award Badge

Colors

The Design

About OmniFiber 自感应变形纺织品

OmniFiber 是一种应用于机器人化纺织品与服装的微流体纤维技术。该纤维能够感知自身的变形，并对其作出机械响应。OmniFiber 可实现收缩、伸展、弯曲与卷曲，具备即时响应、高收缩比与高作用力输出等特性。单根纤维直径最细可达500微米，最粗可达2毫米，并可编织或机织成面料。可穿戴控制模块通过调节气压与流量来编程纤维的运动。其应用涵盖动觉感知可穿戴设备、动态贴合服装以及基于纺织品的触觉装置。

The Recognition

About the A' Design Award 铜奖

OmniFiber 自感应变形纺织品是 A' Design Award 铜奖得主，这是授予以创造力、独创性和敏锐见长的杰出设计的极具声望的认可。铜奖得主是技艺娴熟、创意惊人的作品，印证了其设计师丰富的经验、想象力与机智。预计OmniFiber 自感应变形纺织品将成为一件备受推崇、令人钦佩且被珍爱的物品，兼具显著的专业性与创新性。这件赢得 A' Design Award 铜奖的设计融入艺术、科学、设计和技术领域的最佳实践，并因注重细节而出类拔萃。OmniFiber 自感应变形纺织品出色地满足需求，触动渴望，迷住情感，并吸引好奇心。

Behind the Design

Press Kit

Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.

Unique Properties: OmniFiber is a high-pressure microfluidic fiber technology for robotic textiles and garments. The fiber is engineered to sense its own physical deformation and mechanically respond to it. OmniFiber has versatile morphing behavior such as contracting, extending, bending and coiling with immediate response, high contraction ratio and high force output. This allows a myriad of applications including kinesthetic wearables for skill learning and transfer, dynamic fitting garments, and textile-based haptic devices for telepresence applications.
Dimensions & Packaging: A single OmniFiber device can be as thin as 500 microns and as large as 2 millimeters in diameter. They can be fabricated theoretically at infinite lengths, although we have so far achieved a continuous fabrication of a 60 meters-long fiber spool.
A single contractible fiber of 1.8 mm diameter exhibits forces up to 19 Newtons, demonstrating high speeds of linear actuation with as little as 5 milliseconds response time for full-state morphing.
Tags: Interaction Design, Materials Research, Human-Textile Interaction, Morphing User Interfaces, Haptic Devices, Soft Sensors and Actuators, Microfluidics, Intelligent Textiles, Fibers
Production Technology: This work demonstrates that microfluidic actuation with reinforced tubular elastomers can be leveraged for fluidic morphing matter that acts as a fiber in a fabric assembly. The technology is designed for closed loop Human Textile Interaction by applying localized sensor nodes on the fiber body. A mechanical programming pipeline is developed for versatile morphing states by adding on-demand mechanical constraints. With various assemblies made of OmniFibers, in-fabric haptic feedback is achieved including high frequency oscillations, lateral skin stretch, and compression.
Design Challenge: Recently, there have been remarkable advancements that yield a myriad of engineered fibers, however prior work has often focused on achieving either sensing or actuation, but seldom both. Readily employed fibers such as shape memory alloys have limitations that hinder their integration to everyday interactions. These are high cost, slow response, small forces, arduous training, and risk of burning the skin. To overcome these challenges, we established a fiber technology that uses off-the-shelf materials, is scalable, machine-knittable, safe to wear, and has immediate response.
Research: Advances in materials science invite visions of a world where people interact with machines through garments. OmniFiber presents a novel textile technology where actuated fibers are used to make self-sensing robotic fabrics. The fabrication and comprehensive system design provide designers with an accessible way to knit and weave fluidic morphing swatches. OmniFiber operates with low power, high bandwidth and is strong enough to lift kilograms of weight, making it an ideal technology for kinesthetic wearables such as respiratory regulation-wear, soft exoskeletons for dance pedagogy, and peristaltic compression garments.
Inspiration: Textiles are vital to our survival across scales, from medical textiles that repair our organs to blankets that provide warmth and protection. Although the development of textiles is intertwined with that of human progress, they are still valued as static and disposable goods. Advanced fibers have the potential to create a whole new industry where textiles can sense surroundings; store energy; and communicate in a single package. This will increase the value of textiles to society, transforming them from something we buy, use and throw away, to a platform for experiences and services.
Project Duration: Started in April 2020 at MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, Massachusetts and ended in November 2021. The work has been presented and demonstrated at the ACM User Interface Software and Technology Symposium in October 2021.
Operation Flow: The system design consists of a fiber based interface and a wearable pneumatic control module that together convert energy from a compressed fluid medium to mechanical motion. The fiber behavior is programmed by miniaturized valves in the control module that vary air pressure and flow rate, operated through a graphical interface. The users can interact with OmniFiber based devices leveraging the closed loop strain control functionality for real time, and record-playback interactions, or alternatively design morphing behavior using the event scheduler on the graphical interface.
Patents: Provisional Patent. Patent No. 63/276895. Joint, Media Laboratory. 2021.

https://patents.media.mit.edu/23866TJ
Team Members: Ozgun Kilic Afsar
Ali Shtarbanov
Hiroshi Ishii
Image Credits: All Photo credits to Ozgun Kilic Afsar, 2021.
All Video credits to MIT, 2021.