Computational Design of Active Kinesthetic Garments

Abstract

Figure 1: Our pipeline for designing active kinesthetic garments. Given a set of motions (a) and a compliant garment with electrostatic clutches (light green) (b), our method automatically generates efficient connecting structures (c), that offer strong resistance to input motions when clutches are active while minimizing interference otherwise. Once fabricated, our designs can provide force-feedback on-demand in various applications such as a VR training scenarios (d).

Computational Design of Wiring Layout on Tight Suits with Minimal Motion Resistance

“…These recent works offer in-depth investigation on the intertwined relationship between human posture and garment design, particularly tight suits. Another recent work extends to the design of smart clothing, and optimizes the connection structure of electrostatic (ES) clutches for clothing design that provides haptic feedback [Vechev et al 2022]. Montes et al [2020] proposed an optimization-driven approach for automated, physics-based pattern design for tight-fitting clothing.…”

“…For the first obstacle, a minimum spanning tree constructed on a graph with on-body electronics as vertices and pair-wise shortest paths (i.e., wires) as edges is a sub-optimal solution as it does not allow for wire branching, which provides a larger search space and better solutions. It is also worth noting that a recent work [Vechev et al 2022] proposed a method to optimize garment design for kinesthetic feedback obtained from electrostatic (ES) clutches. While their approach is effective, it is not suitable for our specific task as we solve the problem of wiring layout with a fixed strap width and least motion resistance, rather than determining arbitrarily shaped regions, leading to a completely different solution.…”