The singing land jellyfish are on the move! Take cover! Why must they sing such sweet, sweet songs as they plot our destruction? It’s madness! Oh, no, wait a minute… it was just a false alarm. It turns out some artists got their hands on electronics again, but our destruction is not imminent after all. It is so hard to tell the difference between these two scenarios.
Fortunately for us, we are only dealing with the shenanigans of Matteo Marangoni and Dieter Vandoren, who have created swarms of artificial “creatures” known as Komorebi. If you know your Japanese, that name will give you a hint as to what these robots are all about. Named after the sunlight that filters through the branches of trees, the Komorebi play music that is influenced by the level of light that falls on them.
Nighttime is a blast (📷: M. Marangoni and D. Vandoren)
The semi-transparent, gelatinous body and long, twisting legs are just for show, to get us thinking about what constitutes life. But underneath the hood, the Komorebi are all standard electronics. Each is powered by an ESP32 microcontroller that reads light levels from an HT7833 photodiode. These measurements are fed into a PT8211 16-bit digital-to-analog converter before being fed into a PAM8302 amplifier and played over a speaker. Both the unused GPIO pins and the DAC output are exposed to enable further experimentation with the “creature.”
If you want to creep out your friends and neighbors and make them think that an alien invasion is in process, there are DIY kits available to make your own Komorebi or Komorebi larvae. Or if you think these robots are giving off too much of an “Operation – Annihilate!” vibe, you can just enjoy the video below and avoid getting any closer, just in case they decide to take flight in a wobbly and comical way.