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FacebookDesigning Emerging Technologies I (DET I) begins with an intensive pre-module on digital fabrication and Raspberry Pi technologies. Afterwards, the course is separated into four “blocks”: vision, augmentation, and the body, each engage with a specific emerging technology as a design material. The intention of DET I is not to train students to engage with these specific areas at a level at which they can make theoretical contributions. DET I is an applied class, and as such, foundational investigations in each of these areas—e.g., how Google Cloud Vision is designed, trained, and updated to enable fast fine-grained image recognition and labeling functionalities—are not the focus of the class; the UC Berkeley Engineering curriculum offers several other touchpoints for this domain-specific knowledge. DET I instead intends to give students the technical fluency, creative confidence, and problem-solving mindset to engage with new technologies as creative design materials.
View Projects by Semester
Spring 2022
Exquisite Experiment – AR
Students created one segment each in a large augmented reality installation, inspired by cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse) of the early 20th century French surrealists.
Project by: Cohort FA22
Amber Placenta
An organ from a future where human continually utilize the placenta for its nutrients.
Project by: Celia Diaz, Felicia Renelus, Jessica Kim
Lingua Universum
An exploration of language in relation to time, body, and space.
Project by: Akash Mahajan, Maya Chen
Biocollector
In the year 3022, humans acting as “hosts”, and wearing a “Biocollector”, spend their days collecting, refining, and then releasing important bacteria from their collectors back into the environment.
Project by: Benal Johnson, Zoe Ingram
Contact
Contact is a set of two analog systems, Levitate and Anemone, that react to human interaction by combining pneumatic actuators and sensors.
Project by: Tee O’Neill, Berk Dincer
Future Habitat
Rising sea levels drive humans to develop infrastructure underwater. Our project reimagines streetlights modeled after giant kelp that inflate and illuminate when humans walk by.
Project by: Eleanor Mayes, Chia Ling Chen
HandRehab
An auxiliary medical device for hand rehabilitation based on soft robotics.
Project by: Ming Gong, Can Ge, Rustin Pan
Heliacyte. Post War Rebuilding
Modeled after the national flower of Ukraine, Heliacyte is a sunflower shaped soft robot that engulfs shrapnel and dangerous substances to aid in post-war rebuilding.
Project by: Ramyani Roy, Roland Saekow
The Sinking Island
An island sinking as the sea level rises to show a representative picture of global warming.
Project by: Sora Kang, Dongho Koo, Jaesuk Huh
Tumbleweed
Tumbleweed is a soft robotic creature that lives a nomadic lifestyle. It is non-invasive in its environment and it explores without a specific mission.
Project by: Denise Heredia, Carolyn Nguyen
Tumi
An interactive night lamp that uses tangible, visual, and auditory stimulation to help children sleep.
Project by: Billy Kwok, Bennett Ngan
Vlerke
Flerke is a bioinspired robotic wing system, utilising a combination of elastic tendons, soft robotic muscle actuators and a lightweight mixed material skeleton to achieve movement.
Project by: Jacob Kritzinger, Thomas Chen
VR Museum
An educational VR experience + soft robotics to teach about how climate change affects animals. We focused on Koalas, a resilient symbol of climate change in Australia.
Project by: Lula Duloup, Hannah Bartolomea
Human Touch in Virtual Reality
What if you could experience human touch in virtual reality?
Project by: Debbie Yuen, Kathy Wang
Aurora Scyphozoa Plastikos
“By 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in the sea.” This project investigates deep sea jellyfish – a new life form – which have not only adapted to but also physically become their new environment.
Project by: Emily Joens
Fall 2021
SOMA
soma is a wearable device designed to foster support between two people through subtle message exchanges of warmth, light and vibration.
Project by: Luna Wang, Susanne Pierce Maddux, Yu Cheng, Georgios Grigoriadis
VITALS
A wearable corset that changes color and grows “tumors” in response to people’s positive and negative sentiments when they speak to you.
Project by: Adam Huth, Abhi Ghavalkar, Penny Lin, Yiying Wu
DAT’AMOUR
Find your statistically significant other.
Project by: Ted Huang, Jiaxuan Ren, Shuyang Yu, Kailin Li
SOMNUS
Somnus induces synchronized lucid dreaming to encourage human connection in a society on the brink of collapse, overwhelmed by stress.
Project by: Effie Jia, Titus Ebbecke, Xiaobai Ji, Xinyi Zhu
OFF-LINE
OFF-LINE is a set of wearables that helps to keep compulsive technology usage in check and aims to detach people from their devices.
Project by: David Zhou, Elijah Lee, Franklyn Bucknor,
Jan Veicht, Mercedes Saldana
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