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L’Érosarbénus is an installation that Yosra Mojtahedi regards as a machine - human. “This oxymoronic and innovative art piece, which attracts and repels, fascinates and alerts, in an assumed technological baroque, combines soft robotics and ceramics, drawing and programming, sculpture and sensations in an artistic gesture that emerges from the darkness.” said the jury of the ADAGP about this work.

In this sculpture, the fruits of the tree shaped like phallic heart breasts are realized as soft robotics devices. These fruits are brought to life by pressurized air and reproduce the movements of muscles and sexual organs. This sculpture is a sensory and erotic object which reacts to the viewer, responds to its presence, becomes alive when he approaches, awakening his senses. It allows us to return to the nature of our body and to feel our female existence.

For this project, special syringe-based actuation mechanisms were designed for portability, hiding in the pedestal of the sculpture. With these systems, up to 18 air chambers, that are distributed in a variety of shapes, can be addressed at the same time. The proposed actuation concept has potential uses in soft robotics research due to its modularity.

The programming of this installation is mainly pertaining the actuation of the soft robots (see description of Hardware). The pneumatic actuators are controlled in open-loop using Arduino boards. In the programming, the animation of the soft robots is realized by the coordinated inflation and deflation of the air-chambers inside them. Several parameters of the animation, such as the duration of the motion or the phase between parallel inflation/deflation cycles, have a randomized component. Thus, the animation never looks exactly the same while preserving the overall idea of a respiratory motion or the movement of a sexual organ.

This programming is framed inside a loop that detects visitors and shuts down the installation in idle times. With this, the effect of an awakening of installation is achieved when new visitors enter the room.