# Topics > Wearable computers, wearable electronics > Smart clothing >  Project Kino (kinetic wearables), USA

## Airicist

Contributors:

MIT Media Lab

Stanford Mechanical Engineering

Royal College of Art

Home page - Project Kino

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## Airicist

Kino: Kinetic, “living” jewelry for dynamic fashion
July 8, 2017




> This work explores a dynamic future where the accessories we wear are no longer static, but are instead mobile, living objects on the body. Engineered with the functionality of miniaturized robotics, this "living" jewelry roams on unmodified clothing, changing location and reconfiguring appearance according to social context and enabling multitude presentations of self. With the addition of sensor devices, they transition into active devices which can react to environmental conditions. They can also be paired with existing mobile devices to become personalized on-body assistants to help complete tasks. Attached to garments, they generate shape-changing clothing and kinetic pattern designs–creating a new, dynamic fashion.
> It is our vision that in the future, these robots will be miniaturized to the extent that they can be seamlessly integrated into existing practices of body ornamentation. With the addition of kinetic capabilities, traditionally static jewelry and accessories will start displaying life-like qualities, learning, shifting, and reconfiguring to the needs and preferences of the wearer, also assisting in fluid presentation of self. We envision a new class of future wearables that possess hybrid qualities of the living and the crafted, creating a new on-body ecology for human-wearable symbiosis.
> CREDITS:
> Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao, MIT Media Lab
> Deborah Ajilo, MIT Mechanical Engineering
> Oksana Anilionyte, Royal College of Art
> Artem Dementyev, MIT Media Lab
> Inrak Choi, Stanford Mechanical Engineering
> Sean Follmer, Stanford Mechanical Engineering
> ...

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## Airicist

MIT's 'living jewlery'

Published on Aug 1, 2017




> MIT’s ‘living jewelry’ is made up of small robot assistants. For now, most of the robots’ tasks are decorative. The lab is also exploring some interesting non-design functions. On a raincoat, for example, temperature sensors could trigger the robots to pull the hood’s strings down. “We’re thinking of wearables as a personal assistant,” team member Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao told TechCrunch. “We think in the future, when they can have a brain of their own, they can learn your habits, learn your professional style, and when they get smaller, they can blend into the things you wear.” The team first published a paper detailing early versions of the robots last year. According to Hsin-Liu Kao, “a lot of people saw them as really creepy.”


"MIT’s ‘living jewelry’ is made up of small robot assistants"

by Brian Heater
August 1, 2017

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## Airicist

Article "MIT's new 'living' jewelry are creepy robot beetles for your clothes"
Not fashion meets function yet

by Dani Deahl
August 1, 2017

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