Hill

An e-textile prototype board developed by Alexandra Charland, a Creative Technology & Design and computer science double-major, was featured on Hackaday, a popular hardware hacking website. Charland worked with ATLAS PhD Student Chris Hill to develop the prototype in the post.

A group of 11 students spent the week learning about wearable technology, and then presented their projects showcasing their programmed simple circuits and how they work. Students used custom-built prototyping tools that Hill and co-leader Michael Schneider designed to help the students prototype circuitry. Both Hill and Schneider work with Mark Gross, professor of computer science, and Ann Eisenberg, senior research associate with the Institute of Cognitive Science, on the NSF-sponsored Debugging by Design grant.

Three of Chris Hill's projects –Circuit Playground Extension E-Textile Debugging Tool; E-Textile Logic Probe Debugging Tool; and a Wearable Mini Voltage Meter– were featured this month in "Instructables," an online community of makers. But this wasn't the first time the ATLAS PhD student's projects were featured in Instructables.

ATLAS PhD student Chris Hill's Whiskers project lets the wearer explore the world like a cat, augmenting a person's sensing of the natural world. The device translates input from custom-built flexible sensor whisker devices that receive tactile information from objects in the user's immediate environment.

Chris Hill is an ATLAS PhD student and a member of the Craft Technology Lab, directed by Ann Eisenberg, senior research associate in the institute of cognitive science. He works on the NSF-sponsored "Debugging by Design" project, of which Eisenberg is Principal Investigator and ATLAS Director Mark Gross is co-PI.