Bar­bie has a prob­lem with her per­sonal mo­bil­ity: She can’t walk long dis­tances any­more, as the per­ma­nent wear­ing of high heels has fi­nally de­formed her feet. 

Though her pink con­vert­ible might have been a su­per cool thing in the 1980’s – to­day she looks like a fool in it (at least that’s what Skip­per thinks).In this 6-day work­shop, stu­dents from the Hochschule für Künste and the Uni­ver­sity Bre­men ex­plored and con­structed in­no­v­a­tive and vi­sion­ary (but some­times also strange and scary) mo­bil­ity so­lu­tions for Bar­bie and her lover Ken.

As part of this project we developed the ultimate millennial's Barbie drive dream:

What could be more fulfilling than riding on the back of a Rainbow-Chasing Unicorn? Absolutely nothing! And that’s the reason why we made this dream a reality – at least for Barbie’s friend Christie – who is demonstrating this magical concept for us. 

Christie is a great example for all girls, not only she has a badass hacked unicorn of her own as a transport, she also follows her dreams whilst riding it. And alone! Christie’s experience is totally autonomous proving that girls can go wherever they want, whenever they want.

As part of the Maker Faire of Hannover 2016 we caught the children’s attention and admiration with the colorful and cheerful robots played by Barbies. The fact we had Barbies that were hacked and now had a whole new dimension of playfulness, we showed to both boys and girls that robotics are reachable and fun.

After choosing the concept and the story of Christie we went through the process of hacking a toy-robot we had, to turn it into the mechanics of our unicorn.

We used an Arduino and a motor-shield to control it. To make the reading of the light waves we used light sensors and a lamp underneath to differentiate the rainbow from the light reflected from the mirror surface. To cover everything we laser-cutted a pretty barbie-pink box.

Now with all set we just needed to make Christie look even more fierce, turn a horse into an unicorn, and she was ready to follow her dreams.

The whole exhibition had, in total, seven projects and each one of them delivered a solution for mobility for Barbie, Ken and their friends:

Thank you all for the amazing exhibition and workshop: Annika Engelhardt, Chang Park, Guida Ribeiro, Lara Feldermann, Lukas Seiler, Maria Eugenia Araujo, Marianna Nikulshina, Maximilian Kiepe and Nourelhoda Mohamed 

Special thanks for Niklas Roy, Dennis Paul and Moovel Lab for making this out-of-the-box project possible. And Jakob Weber for the photos and gifs.

Barbie on Speed was exhibited in Galerie Flut (2016) and Maker Faire Hannover (2016).

You can read more about this project here: