Elowan features electrodes placed around the plant's roots and soil and takes minute plant signals to drive the robot where it needs to go. (Image credit: MIT)
Plats are just like people in certain ways; they need food, water, and light to thrive- take any one of those away, and the plant will begin to wither and eventually die. While some plants can extend their limbs or foliage to get what they need (sunlight/water), others lack that kind of mobility and remain stationary relying on nature to keep them thriving.
Researchers from MIT’s Media Lab have devised a way for those stationary plants to become mobile using robotics, essentially making them ‘cybernetic lifeforms.’ The Elowan platform (named after plant creatures in Starlight 3) allows plants to move to locations that have more light when they need it by using the plant’s electrical signals to drive the robot.
As the researchers state in the video- plants produce bio-electrochemically signals between tissues and organs when stimulated. Minute electrical signals in response to changes in light conditions, temperature, and the amount of water it receives (among others). Electrodes placed on the plant, its roots, and surrounding soil, and sends those electrical signals to a robot underneath that translates them to engage a set of wheels in the direction the plant wants to move- If it wants more light, it merely moves closer to a light source.
The Elowan platform demonstrating the plant's movement toward a more prominent light source. (Image credit: MIT)
The researchers explain that the Elowan platform is a new attempt in what ‘augmented nature’ could become- a part in the emerging field of Cyborg Botany (augmented plants as sensors, displays, and actuators), which they describe as “a convergent view of interaction design in nature.”
According to the research team, our primary means of sensing and display are done through artificial hardware, however, these things already exist in nature- “Plants, for example, are active signal networks that are self-powered, self-fabricating, and self-regenerating systems at scale. They have the best kind of capabilities that an electronic device could carry. Instead of building completely discrete systems, the new paradigm points toward using the capabilities that exist in plants (and nature at large) and creating hybrids with our digital world.”
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