Mechatronic Lego Wings Sensible To Stimuli Transform You In a Modern Icarus

The thrill of being a superhero died in the 50s only to be brought back to life characters like Ironman, Avengers, Flash and Arrow reentered cinema theaters. While you don’t have super speed, an iron costume and God-like powers, you can built your own wings like a modern day Icarus. Anouk Wipprecht, a pioneer in fashion technologies, showed fans how to keep enemies away with mechatronic, Lego wings.

After causing quite the stir with her Spider Dress, a creation meant to keep strangers at bay, Wipprecht returned with a tutorial on building mechatronic wings from Lego blocks that respond to stimuli.

In the video above, the creator explains how to use Lego’s MindStorms EV3 construction set and other elements to create the wings. Once the structure is done, you have to make sure it is sensible to stimuli. Therefore, the last step of the tutorial explaing how to configure the sensors.

 An infrared sensor perceives motion near your body, measuring light waves reflected from objects. A digital one can react to objects found at 2.3 feet away, while an ultrasonic sensor sends high frequency waves that bounce back when they reach a person or object. By measuring how much time it took to bounce back, the sensor can tell you if there’s a threat in the immediate 8.25 feet.

In the dark, these wings might serve as a good scare for a petty thief or your brother (more likely), but that’s about it. They are more of an adult toy than an efficient shield.