Helmiina Hirviniemi

Knitted Skin

Dialogue between knitwear development and medical engineering

Knitted Skin is a functional knitwear piece, an artificial skin simulator for measuring children’s breathing difficulty. The technical knitted structures and seamless knitting technology imitate human skin's variable stretch and fit.

Knitted Skin is designed in collaboration with a multidisciplinary research group with expertise in design, engineering and medicine.

Knitted Skin is a functional textile development project looking into the possibilities to simulate the stretch and fit of human skin by knitting. The knitwear development project is part of the work of a multidisciplinary research group looking for more effective ways to explore and measure breathing difficulties in children. The research group is developing a breathing difficulty visualization simulator to teach both artificial intelligence and human health personnel to detect children’s breathing distresses visually. Knitted Skin is a knitted artificial skin of the simulator. The knitwear piece utilizes seamless knitting and different knitted structures to achieve the seamless fit and variable stretch of human skin.

The project is a collaboration between Aalto University, Savonia University of Applied Sciences and Kuopio University Hospital.