Shape changing backpack

About the backpack

Date: 27/11/2014
Course: Shape changing interfaces
Team: Asger, Daniel, Jens, René

We made a prototype of a backpack which could change shape according to spefific the use cases. The backpack had three ways of changing shape: expand the inner and bottom pillow, to make them harder which enables the backpack the stand up by itself and also make it easier for the user to put stuff in it. Furhter, It could expand the lumber pillow, to move it away from your back, in case of warm temperatures. Finally, it had a built-in pillow at the top, in case the user wanted to lie down and use the backpack as a pillow.

Process:

Bought a backpack we wanted to modify.
Experimented with different ways to expand specific areas on the backpack.
By modifying a air compresser we could use an Arduino to control the airflow.
An accelerometer was programmed to start the air compresser based on three different gestures.