Project Overview
This soft robotics project, completed for a Designing Emerging Technologies course at UC Berkeley, is meant to make us think more critically about the signals we see today that may inform our future reality. In a world plagued by climate change, housing insecurity, and food insecurity, how will humanity survive? With the increase in placenta consumption as a health practice, what if the placenta held the key to human survival past the womb?
Key Features
- Arduino
- Silicone
- Air pump
- Water pump
- Strategic Foresight
- Worldbuilding
Context: Year 2121
It is the year 2121. Earth is surprisingly still standing, but barely. Millions of species have faced extinction due to climate change, drastically affecting ecosystems. The rich have taken refuge in space. Those unable to flee have perished or live in destitution. The hundreds of thousands of humans still standing are all climate refugees, living nomadic lives to avoid climate catastrophes. Food is scarce, but the malnourished don't lose hope. In an attempt to generate nutritionally complete formulas, a curious community in California uncovered a placenta that was preserved in amber. Maybe this could be the key to creating capsules with the necessary nutrients?
Goal
Create the placenta that was uncovered from the amber using silicone. Use Arduino to power the air pump to show the placenta "alive."
Process
Materials
Since silicone was the main medium used for this project, my team of three also wanted to explore how we could add other layers to this material. We experimented with adding textiles, thermochromatic powder, conductive paint, and conductive thread to create other interactions.
Fabrication
We decided that we wanted to stick with thermochromatic powder and tubing to include in the silicone structure. The thermochromatic powder would turn the placenta from brown to pink when heated up to indicate the placenta was "alive" or functioning. The tubing would be used to simulate arteries in the placenta, which would have hot water flowing through to simulate blood flow. This flow of hot water activates the thermochromatic powder to change the color.
