Wearable Choreographer: Designing Soft-Robotics for Dance Practice

Abstract

In this pictorial, we describe an auto-biographical design process that led to the fabrication of a soft robotic wearable for lower limb movement guidance that we designated Wearable Choreographer. We first explored the design from a first-person perspective and then shared it with four dancers. Our experiments illustrate how the wearable both constrains and inspires the dancers towards new ways of performing, challenging them to rethink their movements. Our design inquiry contributes with reflections on soft robotics that uncover the challenges and prospects designers and researchers in Human-Computer Interaction face when designing, prototyping and experimenting with such technologies for embodied interactions.

A Review on Wearable Product Design and Applications

“…Allen d' et al [78] developed a soft wearable robot that can guide the movements of the lower limbs according to the rhythm of a song. In essence, an exoskeleton built into a garment was introduced and assist a dancer by instructing the movements to be made.…”