Apology Jacket

Aalto University, 2025-12-04

Apology Jacket is a wearable system that automatically apologizes whenever someone bumps into you.

Handmade pressure sensors sewn into each shoulder detect collisions and measure the intensity of the impact. The jacket uses a Raspberry Pi Pico 2W to request an appropriate apology sentence through the OpenAI API, which is then spoken aloud using speech API. A light bump triggers a short response, while a stronger impact produces a more dramatic one.

Making the pressure sensors by hand—cutting velostat, layering conductive fabric, and sewing them into the jacket—created a meaningful tension between slow, physical craft and rapid algorithmic automation. The irregularity of the handmade sensors directly influenced how the jacket behaved. Even small stitching decisions affected sensitivity and detection. The final outcome felt like a collaboration between the textile materiality and the digital logic.

The project highlights how instinctive and mechanical apologies can be in everyday life, especially in crowded spaces. By outsourcing this small yet intimate social gesture to a machine, Apology Jacket exaggerates and critiques our growing reliance on AI, even for reflexive acts of politeness. The result is humorous, slightly unsettling, and reflective of how easily social behavior can be automated.

Ultimately, Apology Jacket imagines a future where AI infiltrates even the smallest acts of etiquette. If our apologies can be automated, what other parts of human interaction might follow? The project playfully questions what we gain and what we lose when machines begin to speak for us.

Check here for the working process: https://physcomp.newmedia.dog/2025/val/final-project/