Lemna

As derivative of earlier projects Duckweed and Drone, project Lemna arose as mean to create agtech solutions. Lemna got to life during the Master in Design for Emergent Futures program as a binding derivative between sustainable design, agri-tech and future-food alternatives. With a distributed and applied-design approach, we developed on a series of multi-faceted themes where it wanders into radical new roads exploring it’s future in a broad spectrum of know-hows. It’s recognised by open-sourced knowledge systems and touches upon a defined series of urgent + contemporary scenarios, including the food of tomorrow, rural futures and shared learning. Since it’s recent kick-off, Lemna has already resulted in series of approaches comprising an Agri-drone, a Water-lentil Incubator and a Hybrid multi-sensorial monitoring system + device. By applying to IAAC’s Advanced Architecture Contest on Bio-cities we intend to bring Lemna’s approach and solutions to the self-reliant ecosystem it proofs to resonate with. So as to continue to explore and construct meanings in various transitions towards a biologically revitalised future.

As first physical and digital hybrid outcome of lemna, the scan- and monitorunit Oracle was created to gather and communicate environmental data. The object has five on-board sensors measuring aerial humidity, aerial temperature, media moisture, media temperature and light.

As in-depth exploration of electronic design we created an mini version of the Oracle monitor with the same functionalities in 25% of the volume. We design and milled a customized PCB with SMD (=Surface Mount Device) LED and phototransistor chips.

After researching reference material on broad cultivation of water lentils and food-safety within Lemna Minor we created an vertical growing station in which three trays of 8 liter growing media are positioned.

In recent years agricultural robotics and drone monitoring have increasingly become affordable and popular. Since its still a young technology all its limits and possibilities are far from reached. The main concept of having a flying tool at your disposal is interesting from a lot of viewpoints and for a lot of potential use cases. For these reasons plus the encounter I had with Aurora del Camp, I pushed second term's quadcopter to a more applied approach. Full process documentation can be found at second term's page and Discord channel.