Have you ever wanted, during immersion summer, to have a super power that allows to breathe underwater? In a climate bleak future in which the rising sea level will touch closely much of the world's population, knowing how to survive in less dry habitats may become a necessity.

Perhaps with this scenario in mind, Jun Kamei - designer and scientist of the Royal College of Art materials - conceived Amphibio, a diving equipment that turns man into an aquatic creature with gills. Wearable as a scarf, lighter than a classic diving equipment, Amphibio is formed by a special porous material and hydrophobic, which supports the underwater breathing by drawing oxygen from the surrounding water and dissipating outside the carbon dioxide accumulated in the system.

Biomimetics. The technology is based on the ability of certain aquatic insects to form around it a thin air bubble trapped by a layer of hydrophobic hairs, and allows the use of this sort of diving mask as room to breathe. The material designed in collaboration with the RCA-IIS Tokyo Design Lab, will be printable in 3D and available in various configurations: to allow an adult man to breathe underwater, serve Oversized gills, with a surface of oxygen-CO2 exchange 32 square meters.

So far, the experiments in the laboratory of a wearable prototype does not seem to work: the gills progressive draw small amounts of oxygen from the water and manage to dispel the CO2 released artificially in them.

From Focus