BioLogic

More detailed information and public video will come soon! For now, if you are interested, please check out our paper publication, which just got the Honorable Mention Award and Best Talk at CHI2015.

BioLogic is our attempt to program living organism and invent responsive and transformational interfaces of the future.

Brief: nature has engineered its own actuators, as well as the efficient material composition, geometry and structure to utilize its actuators and achieve functional transformation. Based on the natural phenomenon of cells’ hygromorphic transformation, we introduce a living cell as a nanoactuator that react to body temperature and humidity change. The living nanoactuator can be controlled by electrical signal and communicate with the virtual world as well.A digital printing system and design simulation software are developed to assist the design of transformation structure.

Under the direction of Professor Hiroshi Ishii, the bioLogic team has unearthed a new behavior of the ancient bacteria Bacillus subtilis natto: the expansion and contraction of the natto cells relative to atmospheric moisture. The team is capitalizing on this natural phenomenon by embedding the bacteria into fabric to ventilate garments. They harvest the animate natto cells in a bio lab and assemble them with a micron-resolution bio-printing system, transforming them into responsive fashion, a “second skin.” The synthetic bio-skin reacts to body heat and sweat, causing flaps around heat zones to open, enabling sweat to evaporate and cool down the body through an organic material flux.

Together with New Balance, bioLogic is applying this technology to creating sportswear that regulates athletes’ body temperatures, thereby enhancing performance. Lining Yao, who is responsible for concept creation, interaction design, and fabrication for bioLogic, explains, “We are trying to explore how the physical materials and physical environment can be smarter, more adaptive, and become part of us. This garment will understand when you sweat, and it will sense and open up to release your sweat, and close up to keep you warm again. A garment can become an interface that can communicate with your body. The reason we started to explore this bacteria is that we knew that in the natural world there are a lot of smart materials that are naturally responsive. It’s very sensitive to even tiny changes in the skin condition, so we thought an on-skin transformable textile would be a really interesting application.”