Designed by Oslo, Norway design firm Drap go Design, the Interacket is an ATmega328 powered jacket that lets a wearer interact with the objects around them by mimicking their color.
The garment uses a built-in sensor on its sleeve to detect nearby objects, adjusting the color of its LED strips to blend in to its surroundings like a chameleon. According to the firm, the jacket is just one of a many new products inspired by animal powers.
“Many animals got cool ‘powers’ but few of these can be translated directly to humans. We are not be able to use a sonar the way the bat does and we can’t see all the colors the shrimp does, it is physically impossible for our eyes to see more then the colors we already do,” the Makers noted on their Hackaday page.
“Our goal was not to replicate the powers of the animals as exact as we could. We wanted to give the users the idea and the concept of the interaction animals have. We would abstract interactions and change input and output based on how we best could interpret powers from the animals and give it to the users.”
In order to enable these interactions, the Interacket is equipped with a pair of Arduino Uno (ATmega328), Adafruit NeoPixel LED strips and Adafruit color sensors, all of which powered by a single 9V battery. The jacket itself is comprised of reflective foil and diffusive fabric to enable the piece of clothing to prominently display the colors picked up by the sensors.
While the Interacket prototype may have limited real-world potential, the next version of this hue-morphing jacket (which is currently in the works) will change that.
Although it may not be effective as camouflage like its lizard inspiration, potential applications could range from enhanced safety during nighttime activities such as biking or walking to a pretty vibrant outfit for the club scene.
The Drap go Design creation can be found on Hackaday, while those interested in having color-changing powers may also take a look at the Makerrific piece of outerwear in the video below.
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