nt and animate the garment within self- assembling performance.

The speculative context of this work is motivated by the precarious assumption of body mobility when it comes to garment design. This might be discredited by many unpredictable factors like accidents, chronic diseases, or simply aging.

This paradigm is also visible in the assistive device’s design, which is meant to help with putting on a garment but is limited by its initial form and eventually forces the body to perform a movement. To overcome these inconveniences, one has to question the status quo by redesigning the whole
system of getting dressed starting from the beginning, the garment itself.

This work explores the kinetic potential of pneumatic actuators applied to garments. Based on soft-robotic principles, the clothing embedded with the wearable structures acquires a property of self-assembly on the body, without or with its minimal intervention.

Pre-programmed surfaces are able to perform motions like twisting, bending, contracting, gripping, stiffening or extending. As an alternative to linear movements of rigid robots designed for the industrial environment, soft robots perform smooth, almost organic movements evoked by stretching the main
material along with positive or negative pressure. The key factor here is the relation between more and less stretchable surfaces. The air pressure accumulated in the pre-designed chamber expands its walls and forces the rest of the structure to bend in this area.

More movies are available here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDMlnB9yqXjNE0Nl7KNXeOA
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