AQAb

The Air Quality Awareness buddy promotes improved awareness of air quality. Sensors in the wearable measure three gasses (CO, NO2, O3) every two minutes. Those gasses are good air quality indicators. The results are shown in real-time on the build in, soft display. The garment has the appearance of industrial clothing and reflictive fabrics were used. Onto those fabrics black, thermochromic ink was screen printed. This ink turns transparent at a certain temperature. By heating resistive wires underneath the fabric patterns in the shape of the gas molecules emerge. The bigger the pattern the more of the particular gas is present. This way the garment communicates the state of the air quality to its surroundings.

With a small zipper the user can activate the system and at the same time indicate her impression of the current air quality. The garment is connect to the users’ mobile phone. A dedicated app sends the data to an online database. On the accompanying website users can view all measurements on a map and explore the data in different ways.

Awareness Lab: concept, design, production wearable, database design, interaction design, web design and programming

In collaboration with: Digilab Den Bosch: hardware design, hardware engineering / Mister Orange: pattern design, tailoring / Qbus: app development

Also made possible by: Tijlfonds

Thanks to: AnnaMariaCornelia de Gersem, Paul van Bavel

Project website | Project blog