Imperial College London, KTH

Soma Skins will be interactive soft materials, augmented with actuation and sensing, that can be quickly and flexibly attached to both human and robot bodies to experiment with new interaction possibilities and capture data. Our starting point is our partner KTH’s Soma Bits, a toolkit of soft materials that are placed on the body and triggered to inflate, vibrate, and heat up during soma design workshops. Initial work will extend these with pressure, touch, and temperature sensors to capture data about bodily interactions, and collaborate with partner Ultraleap to add ultrasonic mid-air haptics as a further modality. Subsequent work will collaborate with the Additive Manufacturing group at Nottingham to explore how the 3D printing of sensors and pneumatic muscles into soft materials, building on their work for prosthetic hands and Prof Nanayakkara’s soft robotics team at Imperial to explore how techniques for creating membranes with variable stiffness and control.

Kia Hooks soma design grooup at KTH 

Additive Manufacturing at Nottingham 

Ultraleap

Prof Nanayakkara’s group at Imperial