Hand-Made Embroidered Electromyography

Some of you will know that I have had a long standing relationship with CoRE, Centre for Robotics Research at Kings College London.  Last year I was involved in an EPSRC GCRF project to investigate the potential of hand sewn e-textile muscle sensors as a reusable and lower cost alternative to mass produced sensors.

I am very pleased to announce that thanks to Samuel Pitou and Matthew Howard’s hard work, a paper on this project has just been published in the MDPI Journal Sensors.  You can read about it here https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/20/12/3347

I ran a series of workshops with the women’s group Shelanu in Birmingham and at the Science Gallery in London to help  test this hypothesis.  Participants were asked to sew and test a given number of sensors and these were then laboratory tested later.

So this is the technical jargon bit…..When you move a muscle in your body electrical impulses, electromyopthy, can be measured on the surface of the skin (sEMG).  This research project was to compare the results for hand embroidered sEMGs alongside machine stitched and mass produced single use stick on sensors.  The rationale was that because they are on a fabric substrate there is potential for laundering and therefore re-use which may be a cheaper and more sustainable.   Because a hand sewn sensor does not need expensive equipment and relies on straight forward sewing techniques there is also the potential for them to be made by Community Interest Companies (CIC) within the populations of the low income countries where they might be used.

Want to know what the point is?  This short film shows embroidered sEMGs picking up electrical impulses on the skin to drive a robotic limb

Doing the hand sewn hack sessions

The workshop at the Science Gallery London was extremely well attended, indeed oversubscribed with lovely enthusiastic people; a real mix of sewers and those with a keen interest in robotics or e-textiles.  It was quite a challenge for them as we wanted them to stitch sensors using a couching stitch.  It’s a tricky technique where you stitch down a thicker thread with a second thinner thread.  Some really struggled.  One man spent the whole morning really persevering and managed to stitch two sensors.  At the end of the session he pulled me to one side.  He said “Well that was really tough…..”  and I thought ‘Oh dear’ but then he continued “I have such a sense of achievement……I am off for cocktails to celebrate!”

We wont really know how successful the sessions have been until Sam Pitou has spent months testing them off, however what we do know is that initial results show that they are comparable to machine stitched ones.  Positive news.

Made in the Middle

I am just finishing off the testing for the second generation of my piece ‘All the things you are not yet’ which will go on display as part of Made in the Middle next week.  http://craftspace.co.uk/whats-on/made-in-the-middle-herbert-art-gallery-and-museum/.  The show organised by Craftspace, opens its 18 month tour at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry 2nd December 2016 - 19th February 2017.

This is a juried exhibition of the best makers in the Midlands and it is a great honour to be selected not only as an exhibitor but to be one of the featured artists in the celebrations of the show’s thirty year history. http://madeinthemiddle.org/makers/karina-thompson/72.html

‘All the things you are not yet’ is one of my ‘singing quilts’ that have evolved out my collaboration with Dr Matthew Howard at the Centre for Robotics Research at Kings College London.  It features embroidered speakers that play sound files when the quilt is touched.  The circuits making up the speakers are digitally embroidered using conductive threads made especially for me by Benton and Johnson, part of Toye, Kenning and Spencer who hold the Royal Warrant for gold embroidery to the Queen.  The piece is a contraction of 21^st Century computing and both cutting edge and historic embroidery processes.

The quilt has a digital print from a mobile phone photograph of a computer screen taken by a young woman.  The image on the screen was the two pre-implantation embryos that were about to be planted in her womb.  The bundles of cells will go on to become her two sons, Rufus and Rafe.  The sound file that is played through the embroidered speakers when the quilt is touched is those boys, now two years old, singing ‘Twinkle, Twinkle little star’.

One of the embrodiered speakers on 'All the things you are not yet (Cloth of Gold)'

Digital Weekend at the V&A

I am really excited to be part of the digital weekend at the V&A this Saturday and Sunday.  As part of the Crafts Council Parallel Practice, Wheatstone Innovations Lab and Kings College London team we will be demonstrating what we have been up to.  In my case we will be showcasing the embroidered muscle sensors and the embroidered speakers.  We also hope to have a Pfaff digital embroidery machine stitching out pictures of Kinba, the famous KCL robot receptionist.  I will be working alongside Dr Matthew Howard and some of his students as well as the lovely automata maker John Grayson https://johngraysondesign.wordpress.com/ and fabulous glass artist Shelley James http://www.shelleyjames.co.uk/

If you are in London please come along and see what we are doing as part of this great event http://www.vam.ac.uk/blog/news-learning-department/digital-design-weekend-2016

Thanks Dad

Experimentation and sampling are well underway.  This is what my desk looks like this morning.

What you can see are some speakers that I hope will be the size of the ones that we use on fabric the type and size of the final piece.  If you look carefully to can see my old hifi system which I am using the speaker outlets for an amplified signal.  The result is a lovely stereo quilt!  A big thanks to my lovely Dad for that suggestion!  He also came up with a couple of other suggestions that seem to have made a big difference behind the scenes as well.  50 years as an electrical engineer are still paying off.

This project is made possible with the support of The Cultural Institute at King’s College London, premiering as part of Utopia 2016.