Fish && Chips
2019, sculpture
Fish && Chips is a collaboration with Cristina de Propios to build a robotic fish both functional and aesthetically pleasing.
After meeting Cristina de Propios in the Arduino Day 2019 in Zaragoza, we decided to collaborate on a project mixing art and science. Based on our backgrounds and our common interests we decided to create a robotic animal. We considered different animals as inspiration for our robot, but something about fish draw our attention. Their hypnotic movement, and the fact that they exist in a great variety of shapes and sizes, offered us a wide range of possibilities for our design.
A key idea while developing the project was that it should foster creativity, inspiring people to create their own versions of the fish, and allowing them to do so even by traditional means, without requiring digital fabrication machines. For this purpose, our fish robot is composed of two main components. The first one is a standard core, that serves as a base for the fish, and offers an already tested solution for its movement and control, removing the need for advanced electronics or programming knowledge. The second one is a skin that surrounds the fish core and provides fins and a tail to propel the fish in water, as well as its external appearance.
Being divided in two components makes is a perfect educational platform as it is possible to work on different aspects of the robot at different levels: from simply designing new skins to surround a standard core to a deeper understanding of the programming, electronics and mechanics of the robot by modifying the core.
Exhibitions
- Open Source Hardware Demonstration (OSHWDem) 2019
- Woman Tech Makers Zaragoza 2019