One day before the opening of Première Vision show, where Euveka is presenting its robot-mannequin Eminéo, dedicated to textile professionals, Andréa Gilet, Marketing and Communication Director of the Drôme start-up, tells more to Le Boudoir Numérique about this first biomimetic connected dress form. 

By Ludmilla Intravaia

At Première Vision show, from Tuesday to Thursday, in Villepinte, visitors will be able to benefit from a demonstration of your robot-mannequin Eminéo. How does your connected dress form work ? 

Andréa Gilet, Marketing and Communication Director at Euveka : We develop evolutive and connected robot-mannequin, driven by a design software dedicated to textile professionals, from haute couture to ready-to-wear industries, as well as sports, medical and security sectors. Receiving data from specific measurements, the robot-manequin adapts automatically to the desired morphology. Our female dress form evolves integrally or by targeted zones, in height or width, according to key axes of garment construction, from size 36 to 46, in less than 30 seconds. Thanks to Eminéo, we cover 80% of Caucasian and Asian morphologies.

How does your robot fit into the process of making a garment, for example, tailor-made, in a couture house, where the settings of a traditional dress form can be quite time consuming ?

Our robot-mannequin is used at all stages of a garment creation, from molding to final prototyping. Imagine a client who goes to a couture house to order a tailor-made suit. The robot-mannequin is customized according to its measurements, which facilitates a more reliable and faster garment development. The reduction of prototypes quantities, of customer's goings and comings for adjustments and errors leads to time and money saving but also, in terms of ethics, to a reduction of textile waste, of materials waste. In this respect, the local dimension is also important for us. Apart from some printed circuit boards, our mannequin is French and we make sure to collaborate with local suppliers.

How will your robotic solutions evolve in the future ?

We are often asked if we are going to develop a mannequin beyond size 46 and we think about it seriously. But reproducing human morphology takes time. Our mannequin is based on sophisticated robotics technologies, related to biomimicry (process of innovation and engineering inspired by nature, AN). It's really mechatronics (combination of mechanics, electronics and computers, AN) embedded in innovative materials. We also work on a range of mannequins including sensors, for instance of pressure, which will give indications on the comfort of a garment. We plan as well to provide models other than the torso, foot, arm or leg, for companies in the medical field that would need, for example, to test compression stockings. Additionally we would like to enrich the customer experience in shops, where the client could see the garment on our mannequin, customized to its measurements, to limit fittings. Same on e-commerce sites, where all sizes could be visualized, thanks to our mannequin. With all these solutions coming out in the future, we have a nice R&D program ahead of us. 

* Euveka will be attending Première Vision, the global event for fashion profesionnals, from Tuesday 17th to Thursday 19th, September, in parc des expositions Paris Nord Villepinte. Première Vision website is here. 

* Euveka website is there. 

* Continue to read about Euveka with my paper for belgian magazine Vif Weekend about online shopping personalization : “Shopping perso 3.0”.