Nano Micro Macro 2019: Selected Projects
Jonathan Grinham, Lecturer in Architecture (Harvard GSD) + Joanna Aizenberg, Professor of Materials Science (Harvard SEAS)
Teaching Fellow: Dan Tish
Review
Guest Critiques: Martin Bechthold, James Weaver, Jack Alveranga, Holly Samuelson.
Project Name: Foresight
Foresight is a hands-free, discreet wearable device that gives users haptic feedback on what objects are around them. The technology it utilises includes soft robotics, non-linear mechanical structures as well as computer vision. It works by using a phone camera to detect the environment around the user in real-time. It feeds this back to a wearable device which lets them know where these objects are through soft actuators that inflate and contract. The closer a user gets to an object, the more they feel the response. There are different types of actuators in different places, which provide different signals according to the type of stimulus.
Group: Ed Bayes, Milan Wilborn, Nick Collins, and Anirban Ghosh.
Project Name: DEWI
DEWI is a foldable, lightweight tarp that condenses water from the air and collects it for drinking, cooking, and other applications. It is deployed at night to harvest morning dew. DEWI’s surface is punctuated by millimeter-scale bumps that facilitate the nucleation of water droplets, which run down the seams in the fabric to be collected for use.
Group: Barbara Alonso, Seong Hyun Nam, Jason Liu, Sanjana Sharma.
Project Name: The Organic Library
This project uses agar as the main ingredients to create an education toolkit, demonstrating the versatility of a bio-plastic material, including color, elasticity, form change, etc. based on different environmental conditions or manual triggers. We hope to communicate everything we learned about agar as a fun, responsive, sustainable and eco-friendly material that has great potentials to the younger generation.
Group: Peitong Chen, Patricia Lai, Zhaodi Wang, Lucy Yip.
Project Name: Doze
Doze is an on-skin, hydrogel-based sleep mask which seeks to improve, enhance, and augment sleep through the use of programmed scent diffusion in tune with the user’s cortical rhythms. Taking advantage of hydrogels’ unique properties, the Doze mask encapsulates and emits therapeutic scents at a regulated pace. The release of scent is controlled by an embedded heater within the layers of the mask and communicates remotely to a smart device. This communication allows for a personalized dosage release based on the user’s biometric or contextual data. Investigating both the pervasive power of smell in enhancing sleep as well as natural topical remedies, this personalized mask explores the potential for unintrusive solutions to the ever-growing rarity of a good night’s sleep.
Group: Grace Chee, Trevor Cobb, Katarina Richter-Lunn, Irmandy Wicaksono.
Publication: Link