This design Fiction answers the topic “Reducing personal and environmental carbon footprint (as user and consumer) through innovative solutions for energy consumption”, and the design challenge in regard was reducing the energy consumption through the new practices based on energetic independence: I use only what I already have! In specific, the scenario is about the solutions able to transform organic waste into energy. The system then consists of The Animal – Totem – home interface (integrated into the home environment).

The objective here is to design an independent robot for organic waste collection and the totem for collecting the harvested waste and transform it into energy for the community. The general idea is that each family has a robot that is a sort of artificial domestic animal. The Animal harvests the organic waste produced from the other animals and by humans. Once that the Animal is full, it goes to the totem to fills it out. The totem is transforming the waste and distributing the energy equally within the community. Besides, the totem gives feedback about the energy to the community about the progress, distribution, other data. 

This concept explores the scaling of the technology and new applications, ideation of the new interaction rituals. However, it also questions how such a solution may impact the infrastructure of the municipalities in rural areas, the interaction between robots and humans, robots, and other animals.

Year: 2021