Birth of Robots is an art project that reimagines robotic reproduction through the lens of biological birth. A parent robot carries a baby robot inside its body and, when triggered, uses a water-inflated soft membrane to gently push the newborn out, mimicking the mechanics of natural birth. Once free, the baby robot begins swimming on its own, propelled by miniature water-pump jets that leverage Newton's Third Law for biomimetic aquatic locomotion. The project evolved through several pivots, from wheels and linear actuators to pneumatic soft robotics, from rigid shells to lightweight foaming 3D-printed bodies that float effortlessly on water. Both robots run on WiFi-networked XIAO ESP32S3 microcontrollers with custom-milled PCBs, controlled wirelessly through a smartphone interface. Part speculative biology, part soft robotics experiment, the project asks us to reconsider the boundary between living and made things, what it might mean for a machine to be born, to swim, and to begin its own journey.
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