ABOUT OUR FOURTH MEET UPPS

On 21st of June, from the studio of the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, the fourth episode of MeetUPPS took place, which hosted about 35 visitors. This time, we had eight speakers, each of whom pitched about their UPPS project in four different domains: fashion, health, sports and safety. In the second part of the event, there was a possibility for new companies to pitch their project idea, to be submitted for the next round of projects. We closed-off the event with breakout sessions, for each new company to discuss their project with one of our Fieldlab UPPS experts. Overall, a very inspiring and productive afternoon!

Here you can find a short summary of all project pitches, but soon you will be able to read about them in more detail on our website.

Fashion

Maartje Boer was the first to present her project about personalized knitwear with the company STRIKKS. This company already works with customization of knitted items and an interactive virtual fitting experience, where a selected item is projected onto a white mannequin. This experience, however, is very limiting in sizing and personal fit. Maartje designed a retail experience using novel virtual fitting software.

Secondly, Rosa Kramer presented the project that she has been running with her company HYPERcurve. With the Fieldlab project, they focused on reducing the design cycle time for new lingerie, by incorporating 3D design and fitting techniques. To achieve this, a more accurate and customizable digital model was created that accounts for shape variation and the effect of an underwire. 

Health

From the Amsterdam University Medical Center (UMC), Renée Hovenier presented their Fieldlab project about personalized respiratory masks for children in the ICU. Because standard respiration masks are often not fitting tightly, doctors are forced to use invasive respiration techniques, which is not desired. Using 3D face scans and automated modeling software, a mask can be partly personalized for each child. The first prototypes have been tested on test-heads and long simulators. This project will continue beyond the Fieldlab timeline.

Jan Berend Zweerts and Yaman Gupta subsequently presented their project for Maatbril, a company that makes personalized spectacles for people with unique head structures, such as people with Down syndrome. Within Fieldlab, they performed a shape analysis of the area behind the ear and created a 3D head scanner that allows for operators to take an instant and accurate scan with low interaction impact for the client.

From Tjelp Design, Anna Ruiter talked about her Fieldlab project about personalized, aesthetic splint rings. They are in the process of creating a parametric model of a ring, that can be personalized based on unique geometry.

Sports

Norbert Alblas, professional goalkeeper at football club N.E.C. Nijmegen, presented his project on a personalized wrist guard for goalkeepers, to reduce the number of strain injuries.

Safety

Nuno Pires from Swiss-based company Geosatis presented a project about their ankle bracelets for detention monitoring. Together with the Fieldlab researchers, they built a computer model to determine the ideal distribution of size dimensions, using a database of over 2000 ankle scans from the user population.

Future steps of Fieldlab UPPS

After the pitches of the current Fieldlab projects, there were four pitches for new project proposals. In break-out sessions, we held “speed date” sessions with each company to discuss their ideas and our first input. The call for new projects has already opened and submissions will be evaluated and evaluated in sequence of entry. The deadline for submission is December 31^st 2021. It is expected that we will honor about 4-5 new projects and the first will start in the summer of 2021.