Research Groups

Group: Yiyao Nie, Arnav Wagh, Haiyi Huang, Alexandra Lopez

Assignment: Work as a group to test and/or develop a particular type of sensor. This should be a very narrow focus on one material.

Musical Shoes

For our research group project, we made a pair of interactive musical shoes using conductive fabric, conductive thread and conductive paint, Velostat and felt fabric, and foam.

We use conductive thread in the bobbin of the sewing machine which worked perfectly.

This conductive thread interconnected the conductive fabric pressure sensors. Then the sensors on the shoes are connected to Arduino.

Arduino reads data coming from the sensors and then sent data to a Max patch to produce dancing sounds.

We want the shoes to produce sounds when the user’s feet tap in different positions.

And here is a video demonstrating how the shoes work.

Challenges/Lessons learned:

• Conductive thread works more accurately than conductive paint. Conductive paint can easily stain and spill to the other side of the sensor (in this case Velostat) and cause a short circuit

• The sensor detects press best when the conductive fabric on each side overlap.

• For a better prototype, we need to use more durable materials for the overall look of the shoes.