
Smart Home IoT System, Furniture Design
Mixed Reality, Augmented Reality,
Teamwork: 3 people
Duration: 7 weeks
Spring 2019
Textile Operating System (TOS) is a home-based operating system that enables inhabitants to arrange opulent virtual spaces. This project explores new in-door decor through machine-readable patterns, generated using Vuforia, an augmented reality software development kit.
Question
In the era where we are expecting physical and virtual consistently merging, how might we embrace them all together? What is the alternative to designing a smart home system based on our users' inhabitants?

Typical Ways to Plan a Room
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Measure the room.
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Know well where the essential structures are, plan room for them.
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Consider traffic flow.
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Place furniture in a corner arrangement with the foot traffic angling across open space.
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Place some furniture perpendicular to the length of the room.
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Put some furniture on an angle.
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Use the upper part of your walls to allow maximum floor space for furniture.

TOS Ways to Plan a Room
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Fixed, Territorial, Portable, and Wearable, four categories of application programs.
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Users can feel free to use their body movements and habits to browse the web and social media.
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Hyper-customizable virtual contents that fit the user well.


The system relies on the existing building infrastructure that provides a solid foundation for embracing virtual and physical environments.
Scenario
How to use the TOS system?

1
Make Your Own Machine-readable Rug
DIY a decorative rug with your old bed sheets and other rags. Then upload them to Vuforia, an augmented reality development kit that can recognize things through computer vision technology, in order to generate machine-readable patterns for rugs.


Think about how would you use the room without limitations. Where would you like to enjoy a morning yoga class on Youtube? You may want to place the rug closer to the window to embrace the sunshine.
Place Your Rug Playfully

2
The plan view on the left shows a possible way of customizing and arranging the textiles within a studio. The textiles carry digital platforms, e.g. Youtube, Amazon, Instagram, etc.
Hoover to see details.

PROTOTYPING >>>

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TOS has a smarter contextualization process by reading different combinations of textiles in order to understand the current circumstance better.
The demo shows the idea where a specific layout of the textiles triggers
a pre-customized virtual setting by the user.

3
Sit Down and Enjoy
Now the system knows your habits and your favorites. When you move the rug around and create a small setting in your room, TOS reads the composition of these patterns and opens specific virtual programs for you to enjoy.
There are two scenarios in this video demo. The first one shows a user having lunch while watching several Mukbang (eating show) Youtube videos at the same time. The second one (1:32) shows the user switched to the reading time, meanwhile, having her favorite shopping website open because the user has a habit of browsing clothes and accessories while reading an article.

No Outline: REAL
Yellow Outline: VIRTUAL
User Case 1
Relaxing time in the bathroom
This scenario shows that people would spend more time using their phones in the bathroom than in the past. The meaning of the toilet is primarily a place of excretion, but today's bathrooms have a complex and personal significance, such as a more private and secure space. If the change in the meaning of the toilet morphs in mixed reality, you may want to curate a bunch of virtual flowers or have a digital cat waiting for your toilet time.


User Case 2
Lying on bed
Sleeping is the most treasured time that allows living beings not only refresh themselves but allow us to dream and create fantasy. However, as we grow up, insomnia is prone to the most common issue that people have. About 30 percent of American adults report short-term problems, and 10 percent experience chronic trouble falling or staying asleep.
In this user case, TOS provides a fantastic emerging experience of peaceful bedtime stories plus ASMR as a way to help our user to sleep better.

User Case 3
Alone-together eating experience

With the rise of living alone, sometimes, people would rather spend time by themselves, facing the screen than hang out at restaurants. As a result, the percentage of people who watch Mugbang while eating is becoming increasingly common around the world. In this scenario, TOS sets up a series of Mugbang as inviting these live streamers to become our users ' eating companions.