Engineering

August challenge: wearable tech

A smart watch on a wrist

August challenge

Create a piece of wearable technology for your school uniform that can help solve a common problem at school or in the classroom, and present this in a 2 minute video.

Created by: Professor Julien Epps, UNSW School of Electrical Engineering

Wearable technology integrates electronics, sensors and processors into our clothing and accessories. Today, we can increasingly put smaller and less obvious electronics into everyday objects such as sunglasses, watches and other wearable items.

Wearable technologies will often have sensors which collect useful data such as heart rate, GPS coordinates, sound recordings, video and other information. They will also often have Bluetooth or Wi-Fi and can connect to other devices, apps and social media on the internet.

When designing your piece of wearable tech, think about…

  • The kinds of problems you experience at school, in the classroom or travelling to school
  • What kind of technologies are available today? (e.g. smartphones, high speed network connectivity, access to large data storage resources…)
  • What functionality will your device have? Will it detect or record? What sensors will it need?
  • Will it need to connect to social media, school systems or website?
  • How you would integrate your device into your schools’ uniform without changing its appearance?
  • Tell us what an effective and affordable solution might look like
  • Explain how the solution could be implemented in your school

Your video should be no longer than 2 minutes. We encourage you to create a drawing or even a prototype of your wearable tech to show us in your video!

Make sure you upload it to the Girls in Engineering Club Facebook group by Saturday 31st August, and you’ll have a chance to win prizes for participating!

(Don’t have Facebook? Email a link to your video to wiec@unsw.edu.au and you’ll still be in the running to win prizes!)

Need some inspo? Check out these articles: