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MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab team has developed the 4D Knit Dress, a new way to personalize a dress in any size using a six-axis robot arm (typically used in the automotive industry), computerized knitting and heat-activated yarns. Led by Sasha MicKinlay, a recent graduate of the MIT Dept. of Architecture, in collaboration with fashion company Ministry of Supply, the 4D Knit Dress fits the wearer by sculpting the garment around the body, and with a robot arm that blows dry the heat-activated yarn to style the fabric. The resulting dress can also be altered after the wearer has used it for months. They can change the way it looks using the robot arm, computerized design and knitting, allowing the entire outfit to be redesigned and reused.
Once the garment design is programmed into the robot arm, it can quickly produce multiple dresses. The heat-activated yarns follow the robot’s sculpting instructions, such as pintucks, pleats, an empire waist, or a cinched waist. The yarn gets scrunched up using heat without needles or sewing techniques.
Sasha MicKinlay helped produce these active yarns, created the concept design, developed the knitting technique, and programmed MIT Self-Assembly Lab’s industrial knitting machine. Danny Griffin, a current graduate student in architectural design, translates the heat activation process into a programmable robotic procedure. His role allows the MIT’s robot arm to be precise with its movement and application. When heat is applied, the fibers shorten, which results in the heat-activated yarns bundling up in a specific zone, shaping that area as if the robot were tailoring the garment.
Combating fast fashion is one of the solutions MIT’s 4D Knit Dress aims to provide. It’s not like the traditional ready-to-wear outfits with cut-and-sew processes in the fashion industry since the project is only made in one piece. The dress can also be tailored to adapt to changes in styles and tastes.
”It may also be able to absorb some of the size variations that retailers need to stock. … Retailers may be able to have one dress for the smaller sizes and one for the larger sizes,” says MicKinlay.
The team is now looking into working on more styles, looking into technical barriers that may need solving, and exploring whether the demand for the 4D Knit Dress is present.