Some weeks ago I received an email from Thomas Brien, a Marine Design student at Massey University Auckland, New Zealand, who wants some help with his ongoing graduation project, two-person submarine. After writing back and forth I am posting here some detailed info about the Neptuno project, an experiment into to the development of a design concept for future submarines and their propulsion systems. It may help Thomas or anyone else in the pursuit of the little mermaid as I like to put it.

The Neptuno Submarine Concept submarine was my graduation project at the School of Arts and Design in Offenbach, Germany. I time where the letsevo website was not yet existent. It was first presented in the 17 of February of 2005. My supervisors for this project were: my great mentor Prof. Dieter Mankau (HfG Offenbach) and Dr. -Ing. Robert Mayr. The work was sponsored by the german automatization company Festo AG, which had interest in applications for there Pneumatic Muscle Technology.

Goal of the project:
Design a submarine that makes use of new developments in maritime propulsion research, more specifically: Flexible Fin propulsion (read: Fish Propulsion). Learn from what research was telling us about flexible fin propulsion and translate that in to a design of a two person research submarine propelled only, by the means of such propulsion system.

Startpoint at that time (Jun 2004) were research results from the MIT Robotuna (2000), and the “Forelle Flossenantrieb” from the university of Saarland, Germany (1995) along with many scientific articles on the subject from brilliant minds like W. Nachtigall, R. Blickham and Dr. A. Kesel on the great Biona Report.

Neptuno Submarine, 2005, HfG Offenbach. Design: Henrique Monnerat

In the next days, I will we writing a series of posts to explain in detail how I came to this design and what happened after my graduation, when I received a full scholarship from Festo AG to develop a working model of the propulsion system conceptualized for the Neptuno Submarine in form of a post graduation study.

Stay tuned!

Letsevo is addicted to Art, and the place where art meets product design is where the Ecosk8 Artist Series wants to be. It is with great pleasure that I review here the first collaborations of Artists for what Letsevo would love to have as a future series of skateboard decks. Letsevo wants to thank and congratulate all Artists for taking the time to participate and for there amazing designs! Want to know more about the these Artists, click on.

Click here to go to the gallery site