ElectroDermis: Fully Untethered, Stretchable, and Highly-Customizable Electronic Bandages
2018-2019
Wearables have emerged as an increasingly promising interactive platform, imbuing the body with always-available computational capabilities. This unlocks a wide range of applications, including information access, health, fitness, and fashion. Unlike previous platforms, wearable electronics require structural conformity, must be comfortable and should be soft, elastic, and aesthetically appealing. We introduce ElectroDermis, a fabrication system that simplifies the creation of wearable electronics that are comfortable, elastic, and fully untethered.
By Eric Markvicka*, Guanyun Wang*, Yi-Chin Lee, Gierad Laput, Carmel Majidi, Lining Yao (* Contributed Equally)
Publications: ACM CHI 2019 PDF | DOI
Awards: Dezeen Award 2019 Design Longlist | SXSW 2020 Innovation Awards Finalists
News: Fast Company | Dezeen | Designboom | AI Med| Printed Electronic World | AXIS
We describe a series of example applications that illustrate the feasibility and utility of our system. Overall, we believe ElectroDermis offers a complementary approach to wearable electronics—one that places value on the notion of impermanence (i.e., the opposite of tattoos and implants), better conforming to the dynamic nature of the human body.
We demonstrate our holistic fabrication approach through a series of examples, across different locations on the human body, with varying complexity and artistic expression. Te selected locations are suited to a variety of high-functionality sensing modalities (e.g., heart rate, body temperature, wound healing status) and environment interactions (e.g., color changing jewelry, health status) made possible with ElectroDermis.
An efficient, holistic fabrication approach and sofware design tool for creating untethered, highly-functional and stretchable (strain > 60%) electronic devices that conform and adhesively bond to the human body. Specifically, we advance the state-of-the-art by introducing a fabric layer to the fabrication process, increasing robustness, durability, and reusability.
These individual components are wired together using stretchable electrical wiring and assembled on a spandex blend fabric, to provide high functionality in a robust form factor that is reusable. We describe our system in detail including our fabrication parameters and its operational limits—which we hope researchers and practitioners can leverage. We describe a series of example applications that illustrate the feasibility and utility of our system. Overall, we believe ElectroDermis offers a complementary approach to wearable electronics—one that places value on the notion of impermanence (i.e., the opposite of tattoos and implants), better conforming to the dynamic nature of the human body.
Our system spans across a wide range of processes, from a custom software design tool, to material layering, hardware design, and end-user applications.
