Is this for real? A hair extension that can send commands to your phone? (via Hairware video capture)
Just when I thought smart technology couldn’t get any more unbelievable, researcher and Beauty Technology designer Katia Vega created ‘Hairware’ – hair extentions that can send commands to your smartphone. At first I thought this was a fantastical concept that was playing on the James Bond movie coming soon, but it is real!
Katia Vega showcased her functioning prototype of the smart hair extention at the Intelligent User Interfaces 2015 meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. Her demo allowed spectators to take selfies with a smartphone using the ‘hairware.’ The pictures were uploaded to facebook and you can see them here if you’re interested in seeing some excited academics touting a hair extension:
Vega also presented her recent paper at the meeting which details the hardware and software of her hairware device, including some potential uses. Essentially, Vega created artificial hair extension follicles that are able to conduct electricity and act as sensitive sensors. Since hair is so flexible and versatile, variations in the electric conductivity can be created by varying touches and gestures of the hair. Hence, Vega expects that software can be designed to utilize a wealth of different touched to communicate commands to a smartphone. It would even be possible for a piece of software to monitor how a user naturally plays with their hair, and ‘learn’ specific commands. For now, the hairware is still in the prototyping stage, but it could become a viable idea with more tweaking and market research.
For now, her design surrounds the metallisized hair sensors with non-conductive, hair follicles to improve the sensor values by isolating them from other hair and skin. The sensors are connected to Bluetooth module that allows wireless communication to an Arduino microcontroller. The Arduino can then utilize software to communicate with the smartphone and issue commands. The current prototype can differentiate between a touch to the root, middle, or tip of the hair sensor. In theory this could provide inputs to control a wealth of commands. Particularly, Vega fancies the idea of utilizing the hair extensions as a method of allowing the user to send clandestine texts during times of danger. Hairware could provide users with a method of alerting the police that they are in imminent danger. In a video on the potential uses of Hairware, a woman clandestinely starts recording a conversation – imagine that!?
For now, Vega is focusing on continually refining the functionality of the hair extension sensors to have a seamless, accurate interaction. For now, the algorithm is actually attempting to learn and recognize the users touch variations so that it can more accurately respond by sending the correct command. I imagine there are also hardware concerns that must be streamlined for practical use. I’m sure battery use will be an interesting problem to solve, in addition to figuring out where users are expected to put the microcontroller. It would be pretty uncomfortable to wear all that hardware on my head, but I suppose you can place it in a funny hat, or a purse.
The progress that Vega has made on this Hairware extension is quite impressive and I’m interested to see how it progressed. Who knows? You may see it on Kickstarter soon.
You can view Vega’s paper after this link.
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