Spider-Man-inspired jacket inventor wants to help visually impaired move By Ally Marotti Blue Sky Innovation
The vibrations are gentle at first, like a text coming through to a pocketed phone. But the intensity increases — almost like the hair rising on the back of your neck when someone’s following you.
Actually, it’s exactly like that, said Victor Mateevitsi, inventor of a jacket that vibrates if something — or someone — is close.
His SpiderSense jacket, filled with sensors and inspired by Spider-Man, has been featured on the Science Channel’s “All-American Makers.”
Mateevitsi, a doctoral student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is scheduled to pitch at Technori’s maker-themed showcase on Tuesday.
He said the SpiderSense jacket could help prevent injury among people with visual impairments, or help firefighters find openings in a smoke-filled building with low visibility.
“It allows you to feel the environment around you. It scans for people or objects, and it vibrates,” he said. “The vibrations increase as you get closer to the object. … If someone is following me, I can feel them.”
The jacket has 12 sensors: one on each shoulder, one on each wrist, and two on the chest, abs, upper back and lower back. The varied placement lets the wearer distinguish the size of a nearby object. If all the sensors are vibrating, it might be a person or a wall. If just the upper sensors are vibrating, it could be a hanging object — and the wearer might need to duck.
“If you’re not feeling anything, you know it’s clear and you can walk safely,” Mateevitsi said.
The project was born out of Mateevitsi’s research at UIC on human augmentation, or the idea that someone’s senses can be enhanced. He wanted to know how the vibrations would change people’s situational awareness and to collect data on whether wearers would eventually develop somewhat of a sixth sense.
His adviser, Andrew Johnson, pointed to eyeglasses as an example of an early augmented device.
“It’s something that’s so ingrained in our lives it doesn’t look odd to see someone walking down the street with eyeglasses,” said Johnson, the director of research at UIC’s Electronic Visualization Laboratory. “That’s the angle we’re trying to take with this. … What we’re trying to focus on is not so much trying to regain an ability, but how can we add something.”
Mateevitsi is working with the Chicago Lighthouse, a nonprofit providing rehabilitation services for people with visual impairments, on improving SpiderSense.
Tom Perski, senior vice president of rehabilitation services at Lighthouse, said the jacket could be especially beneficial to people with tunnel vision or other partial vision impairments.
“It really is not going to replace a cane or the guide dog,” he said. “But it is going to give people … a certain dimension and feedback they can’t currently get in any other way.”
SpiderSense is still in its prototyping phase. Right now there’s only one, and it’s actually just a branded jacket with the logo removed, concealing a tangle of wires that connect the sensors and motors.
That’s a big improvement on the first version — a set of sensors that took about 20 minutes to put on and, with wires extruding every which way, wasn’t exactly discreet.
Now Mateevitsi’s on the verge of graduating, and he’s ready to attempt to turn SpiderSense into a scalable business. He’s talking to investors and still has a few problems to solve with the jacket — like how to hide the sensors and get rid of the wires.
Although Marvel has been using the term “Spider Sense” since Spider-Man debuted in the 1960s, Mateevitsi is hoping to stick with that name for the jacket. He hasn’t reached out to the comics company yet.
Marvel has trademarked the phrase “Spider Sense Spider-Man,” according to the Library of Congress’ website. Marvel representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
As Mateevitsi works to get the jacket to market, he’s been operating out of West Loop-based coworking space Catalyze since December. He says he’s getting closer to making the product commercially available, and hopes the finished product can cost less than $1,000.
“Now is the right time,” he said. “We have reached a point where we can make these things cheaply. We’re going to start seeing more and more things embedded into clothing.” amaro...@tribpub.com
Twitter @allymarotti -- *================================================ Duane Whittingham - N9SSN - Fort Mitchell, KY (ARES/RACES, EmComm, Skywarn & Red Cross) http://www.radiodude.info ================================================ *
_______________________________________________ Medianews mailing list Medianews@etskywarn.net http://etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews_etskywarn.net
