Guitar hero: Dr Richard Helmer dons sensors to tune up the air guitar shirt amid other movement-based inventions set to go on exhibition at Geelong’s Ford Discovery Centre.
AN ELECTRONIC “air guitar shirt” will blast out the Australian anthem next week to launch an exhibition of initiatives in Geelong science laboratories.
Dr Richard Helmer, who invented the shirt with CSIRO Belmont colleague Michael Mestrovic, said rehearsals were underway for next week’s performance.
Dr Helmer described the guitar as sensors that could be strapped to a shirt below the elbows.
One sensor was for strumming and the other to choose chords.
The launch of the State of Design Festival exhibition at Ford Discovery Centre on Wednesday would be the shirt’s debut performance of Advance Australia Fair.
“We’re going to add a bit of spice to it,” Dr Helmer said.
A Geelong music teacher would play the anthem, although he had no experience with guitars or the shirt.
“We’re under the pump,” Dr Helmer said.
“But you don’t have to be a guitarist to play (the shirt). You don’t even have to be a musician.”
Dr Helmer said he and his colleague invented the shirt “because we could” but it had since found applications in improving the performance of athletes.
“We’re trying to take it into medical stuff as well.”
Organisers said the interactive exhibition would also feature a Deakin University search and rescue robot and a “super-fast human-powered vehicle”.
Inventors and designers would attend to show how their creations could be adapted to various applications, the organisers said.
The exhibition, running under the theme Design That Moves, would be open for “self-guided tours” until July 29.
The Ford centre is in Gheringhap Street.
