If you’re feeling underwhelmed by yet another smartwatch announcement, then researchers at the University of Maryland may have just the wearable for you. Instead of just tracking your movement from one spot, Calico winds around you like a cartoon sidekick.
Using a “railway system,”(PDF) the Calico can travel around a garment to get better telemetry than if it were shackled to a wrist. By moving around the body, the robot can track exercise, teach dance moves, or take up-close heart measurements. Tracks can be magnetically linked across garments, and Calico can use different movement patterns to communicate information to the user.
This two-wheeled robot that rides the rails is built around a custom PCB with a MDBT42Q microcontroller for a brain which lets it communicate with a smartphone over Bluetooth Low Energy. Location is monitored by small magnets embedded in the silicone and plastic living hinge track, and it can use location as a way to provide “ambient visual feedback.”
The researchers even designed a friendly cover for the robot with googly eyes so that the device feels more personable. We think animated wearables could really take off since everyone loves cute animal companions, assuming they don’t fall into the uncanny valley.
If you love unusual wearables as much as we do, be sure to check out Wearable Sensors on Your Skin and the Wearable Cone of Silence.
This is bizarre, I don’t see any immediate practical applications but I think it could make someone’s cosplay outfit pretty great.
Flea are wereables too
Pls print a cockroach skeleton for the moving part :D
How about a Thomas the Tank Engine face?
That definitely feels like the logical conclusion of this technology!
I’d put multiple tracks on my clothing and make those robots look like cockroaches. and move randomly. Let them glow either hellish red or radioactive green. It would be the most bizarre Halloween costume.
I’m sure the Pr0n community will have fun with this.
I can’t think of a practical use, but it’s absolutely adorable and I want one.
I was talking with a nurse and they mentioned that this could have some application in physical/occupational therapy, which would be interesting.
I think they’re underselling themselves here
The advance is in the wearable track, not the robot.
This is really quite cool but if you wear it outside I’d expect to get the first generation google glass treatment :p
I met Calico twice. Once in South Dakota in 1980, then at a Grateful Dead concert in 1984. One of the Hig Farmers.