Unmasking Mask
"How to Make (almost) Anything" course @ MIT Media Lab | 2016
Unmasking mask is the final project for the course “How to Make [Almost] Anything” at MIT Media Lab focused on Digital Fabrication and DIY Making. Each weak, we got exposed to a topic, and fulfilled weekly “Making” assignments and documented them in our personal websites. [You can find mine HERE] the 2-week final project needs to combine all the skill-set including design, embedded programming, CAD design, digital fabrication, and etc.
"Unmasking Mask" is a wearable device for enhancing empathy by showing “emotional state” of the wearer to the outer world. The brain activity gets recorded through EEG sensor placed on the forehead, and after post-processing the data, it gives measurements to the lever of [Focus VS. Distraction] and [Stress VS. Relaxation] of the wearer. This data then gets reflected through the color of lights emitting from the mask. In this way, as the mood of the wearer changes, the color of mask changes accordingly which informs the people around of the new emotional-state.
I designed the wearable using rhino and grasshopper and used 3D printing for fabricating the main parts. I got the EEG sensors by hacking into a commercial toy from Neurosky Company, and made tiny boards containing RGB LEDs to be placed on the wearable as output. For the electronic boards’ production, I used EagleSoft for designing my own circuit board (with ATTiny328 as the main micro-controller) and fabricated the boards by milling the copper board using Roland Mill machine.