Tardigrade Experiment

What does the world appear and feel like from the viewpoint of the tardigrade, the strongest organism on Earth?

Context

The microbial world is virtually invisible to the naked eye. However, everything in our environment originates from these organisms living in this world. Microbes are microorganisms consisting of prokaryotes (bacteria) and eukaryotes (fungi and algae). Without bacterial microbes, we as humans would not be able to survive, they fight infections and break down harmful substances for us (probiotic bacteria). Over their long time on Earth, they have evolved to survive extreme conditions. One of the most well-known is the Tardigrade, also known as the water bear, which can, for example, survive extreme temperatures, the vacuum of air, exposure to radiation, and 30 years without food. They are found in bodies of water such as moss. Water bears can only perceive light sources, and through the hairs on their bodies they detect vibrations which help them navigate toward food.

For our embodied experience design, we focus on how the Tardigrade can survive in extreme temperatures. In extreme heat, the Tardigrade will completely dehydrate. This process is called cryptobiosis, also known as the tun formation. In the tun formation, the Tardigrade is contracted into a small ball. A single drop of water is enough to restore this microbe to its original state.

Attaching the arduino parts onto the gloves

Concept

Our goal is to let people experience the high survival capabilities and the microbial world, and in doing so, make them aware of the existence of microbes and inform them about them. The participants will experience the cryptobiotic state, which we will simulate by stimulating the senses: sight, touch, and sound. The senses of a Tardigrade are different from ours, so the wearer will perceive things differently than usual.

The experience was enhanced by creating a roleplay environment to fully immerse the user:

The participant will be greeted by the researchers in the laboratory and will be given information about the process the researchers will undergo; what happens during the cryptobiotic process of the Tardigrade. To ensure the test proceeds properly, the participant must be sterilized. They will then be given an explanation of the procedures that will be carried out. After this, they will be assisted into a suit, which will aid in the transformation and in withstanding the extreme living conditions of the microbial world. Once the participant is transformed, they will be exposed to extreme heat and thus be forced into a cryptobiotic state. This allows the researchers to better observe the process and gain more knowledge about the cryptobiosis of the Tardigrade.

Along with putting on the suit, the user will wear a VR headset and stand on the trampoline to simulate the feeling of weightlessness. Then, they would insert their hands into the gloves, and put on the VR headset. In the VR environment, the participant would experience a transformation into the form of a tardigrade by “shrinking” them, experiencing the world through the eyes of a Tardigarde. The gloves would vibrate in response to various stimuli, and the inflatable suit would inflate and deflate to simulate the cryptobiotic state of the tardigrade.

Once the experiment was over, the VR environment would return the participant to their human form, and a “scientist” would ask questions about the experience to gather data and insights.

Arduino and Unity

My main tasks for this project were setting up the Unity project and connecting the Arduino to it. This was difficult, since there isn’t a lot of documentation on combining Unity and Arduino, so I had to figure things out myself. That’s why the following code might not be optimal, but it worked for our project. I tested the entire code using LEDs instead of vibrating motors, because that was easier to test, and the code could easily be adapted for the vibration motors later.

First, I wrote the code for the Arduino and connected everything to six LEDs: one for each finger and one spare in case one failed. The Arduino code is quite simple; it reads real-time data from Unity. For example, when Unity sends the letter “A” to the Arduino, a LED turns on.

Next, in Unity, I made a ball animation that passes the user. I wrote a script that activates certain LED functions whenever the ball enters a specific area. For instance, when the ball is in the area between x = 1 and x = 3, LED 1 (red oval in the illustration) is on. When the ball is between x = 0 and x = 2, both LED 1 and LED 2 (green oval) are on, and so on, until the ball passes the user. This way, the user can “feel” the ball passing through vibrations in their fingers, just like a tardigrade senses it with its whole body.

Finally, I 3D-modeled the environment in Blender so that it still looks like the user is inside the tent, and not in VR.