“Medusa Dress”
A software engineer at Google has created the “world’s first AI dress” which has been dubbed by the internet as “both creepy and cool”.
Christina Ernst has shared a video of herself adorned by what she terms the “Medusa Dress”, with robotic snakes programmed to detect faces and look at people. She explains how she built the dress and gives her viewers a glimpse of her failed prototypes, revealing how she programmed her AI snakes.
View this post on Instagram
With over 3 million views till date, the video has created a storm across the internet. Many users have praised her for her tremendous effort and achievement and criticized the comments addressing the comments that expressed disappointment with the final creation.
“I’m also an Engineer and I love fashion, so I really love this project! There are many comments saying they expect something different, I wish they knew the amount of effort, time and money it takes to do this kind of project. Well done girl,” one user wrote.
“The people who are ‘disappointed by this’… are we seeing the same video? I’m sorry but this is amazing. Looking forward to seeing everyone else build their robot snake dresses,” another added.
“You said there’s a lot you would improve, but literally the only thing I could imagine improving is more snakes. Though I’m sure that would be a weight issue. It’s beautiful as is!” another praised.
Ernst addressed people’s opinions, be it praise of criticism. “I certainly had much higher expectations for the design as well! I experimented with air dry clay, foam, fabric, 3D printing, and embroidery to add snakes while keeping the weight down. But at some point, I was ready to call this effort, since it’s just a project I was doing in the evenings for fun before this account blew up and since I’m a full time engineer. Engineering is about trade offs and I’m happy with the ones I made.”
Her account, titled “She Builds Robots”, aims to teach girls all things technology, ranging from building robots to coding your own embroidery. It has over 170k followers till date.
