Cohort 2 student Amy Hicks wins First Prize at the Functional Fashion Competition at the IROS Conference 2023.
She had the following to say about her experience: ‘The Sumbrella is a portable robotic wearable device, resembling an umbrella hat designed and built by the Bristol-based roboticists and robopsychologists. It contains soft bio-inspired tentacles which responsively interact with humans or objects in the surrounding environment via tuning movement and changing their shapes for a wide range of dynamic behaviours.
The Sumbrella is now being developed further and tested with human participants. This project will examine perceptions of its behaviour as it responds differently to interaction with individuals and crowds within a wearer’s personal space. This project will be submitted for publication with my team and will form a chapter in my thesis on socially adaptive soft robotics as augmenters of personal comfort.’