Imagine being able to don a jacket that is able to change its colours based on the world around you, akin to that of a chameleon and its ability to change the colour of its skin. It looks as if Norwegian design company Drap og Design has finally brought that idea to life.
With Drap og Design’s goal to help connect us to the animal kingdom, their first project was inspired by a chameleon in the form of a jacket that’s aptly named as “Interacket”. Interacket is a translucent jacket that has built-in sensors which detect the colour of objects that you are physically touching with your hands. Said colour is then projected by strips of RGB LED displays that span the sleeves of the jacket, giving it a chameleon-like quality.
Here is a video that shows off the jacket in action.
The jacket employs a pair of Arduino Uno chips, Adafruit Neopixel LED strips and Adafruit colour sensors, all of which are connected and powered to a single 9v battery. The material of the jacket is made out of reflective foil and a diffusive fabric which enables the coat to display the colours picked up by the sensors.
As it stands, the initial prototype seems to serve no real purpose except for being aesthetically pleasing but could change with future iterations of the jacket.
[Source:CNET]
