Flooded city? No prob with these artificial gills

Rising sea levels inspired Royal College of Art graduate Kamei, in partnership with RCA-IIS Tokyo Design Lab, to create a lightweight underwater respiratory device. Amphibio is a 3D-printed accessory that works as a gill and may one day provide humans with an alternative way to breathe underwater.

Amphibio is currently just a working prototype, tested at small scale in an aquarium. The next step is to prove that it can be used by humans, though Kamei believes that this will require a gill with a surface of 32 square meters (344 square feet). Might be too big a gadget to carry around? The challenge is humans consume large amounts of oxygen and although oxygen is dissolved in the water, the rate it needs to be drawn through the gill is huge, and this makes the gill wide in surface area. Kamei is looking to improve the material to allow for faster gas exchange. We wish you good luck with your endeavour Kamei and can’t wait to turn underwater superheros battling climate change!