2024 - To the depths, To the eyes

This design is aimed at the high and narrow streets in the urban village area of Shenzhen, where the lighting infrastructure is not so sound. We designed a soft robot that can float all year round on the roof of the urban village where there is enough solar energy. The top floating body is attached with solar panels to collect daylight during the day and convert it into electricity for the lower soft robot. The soft robot contains a large number of optical fibers inside, and the soft robot can adjust the length and shape according to the width, height and height of the street, so that the optical fibers can be extended to the right height at night, which can provide brightness for the crowd passing on the road.
In terms of the interaction between devices and people, we designed a wechat mini program that can locate all the fully charged software robots floating on the roof. When people walk at night, they can open the wechat mini program at any time to locate their own location. Through the mini program, we choose the road section we want to walk on at night, and the nearest software robot will appear above our heads at the fastest speed. It is then deformed according to the depth and width of the street, so that the fiber reaches the overhead part of our head, giving us the right brightness.
Soft robots are derived from a bionic design, and many creatures in nature exhibit adaptability and extreme shape changes through unique movement patterns. One example is the ”dual-mode” morphed Eurypharynx peelecanoides, which first unfurls and then expands its mouth to maximize the possibility of devours its prey. Here, we show the pelican-inspired double deformation structure that embodies the behavior of origami unfolding and skin stretching in response to complex situations, precisely aiming at the target point. To mimic this creature, we developed a soft robot, and the soft robot can stretch the whole length by inflating, and we can adjust the direction of the stretch of the soft robot, so that we can accurately illuminate the position that needs to be illuminated.