In a futuristic world, the environment lacks gravity and as a result, humans and objects cannot stay planted on Earth. Not only are all objects now floating, but heavy winds also sweep us up and off into space. Ideally, we would like to stay planted on Earth so humans can survive.
Initially, we dove into our project by brainstorming ways that humans would be able to survive on a planet that had no gravity and heavy winds. To begin the design process, we looked into kites and human flying squirrel suits to potentially find ideas of how to tackle the main problem of heavy winds on Earth. At first, we brainstormed the concept of a wearable kite that could help one fly through the environment. Rather than designing a piece of "clothing," we wanted to design a wearable mechanism. The idea was to brainstorm various kites on a human body.
Next, we experimented with the idea of having spider legs that weighed you down into the ground and could walk along with you as you walked. Essentially, the leg would weigh you down as the wheel/spider leg would help mobilize you. The idea was inspired by plant roots. To create a mobilizing mechanism, we looked into three different methods. The first was inspired by spider claws that would have fingers and legs that would walk along with the wearable. We also looked at a tread concept that would roll alongside.
Lastly, we explored the idea of wheels like on a tricycle or office chair that would use three wheels (2 in the front followed by 1 in the back to motorize the piece).
Our team chose to incorporate the spider claw inspired mobility device to walk our piece. Moreover, the wearable has legs that attach to the mobility device that are attached to a piece of felt that adds movement and some stiffness to the piece. To design the legs, we had to think about whether or not we wanted a hinged leg that can swing in different directions, or a linear leg that came out at a 90 degree angle to the ground. Because the hinged leg provided too much mobility, we chose the linear leg that could spike into the ground. The final iteration of the wearable had a range of legs spread out around the bottom piece of felt that provided a spider like mobility device.