Marco Zagaria is an engineer with big ideas about neuroscience, programming and design. After seeing a documentary about the migration patterns of birds he was fascinated by their ability to follow electromagnetic fields over thousands of kilometers. At the same time he was frustrated by the visual and audio turning indicators on his vehicle in the busy streets of Rome. Sometimes the indicator noises would be too loud and sometimes he would be distracted by the act of driving and miss those indicators altogether. He developed Ubivade, a wearable for the waist that sends vibrations to the user and guides them to a destination. Ubivade is currently running a Kickstarter campaign to fund the first production run of parts.
Marco talked with us and answered a few questions about Ubivade's design, development and manufacturing process. Much of the design was guided by Umwelt, the expansion of reality perceived by humans. If Umwelt is a sphere that surrounds a person and allows a zone for our five senses to experience the world, then the guiding principle of Ubivade is finding ways to make that sphere of sensing the world larger.
Connecting several motors in series through a wearable device was the biggest design challenge faced in the project. Some prototypes had cables that snaked through the waistband and connected the motors, and the connections were solid but the cables were visible underneath the belt. Eventually thin PCBs were used that would perform properly and hide themselves within the belt's footprint.
Battery choices were also limited because of the small packing size of a belt. A ceramic lithium battery is used based on its high storage capacity, light weight, and safety factors. Work continues on the system to find the smallest possible components that will still function under the team's test conditions. Beyond moving this haptic feedback technology to different areas of the body, Marco is working to develop a system for the blind that will guide and navigate based on physical or audio cues.
Ubivade is a great design in the growing field of wearable tech, and using the brand of find Italian craftsmanship is a good way to delineate itself. Designing with the concept of Umwelt and expanding our immediate consciousness is fascinating and completely new to me. The Kickstarter campaign ends on October 29, 2016 and if successful first units are expected to ship in February 2017.