Flora Robotica – Mixed Societies of Symbiotic Robot-Plant Bio-Hybrids

Besides the life-as-it-could-be driver of artificial life research there is also the concept of extending natural life by creating hybrids or mixed societies that are built from both natural and artificial components. In this paper, we motivate and present the research program of the project flora robotica. We present our concepts of control, hardware de-sign, modeling, and human interaction along with preliminary experiments. Our objective is to develop and to investigate closely linked symbiotic relationships between robots and natural plants and to explore the potentials of a plant-robot society able to produce archi-tectural artifacts and living spaces. These robot-plant bio-hybrids create synergies that allow for new functions of plants and robots. They also create novel design opportunities for an architecture that fuses the design and construction phase. The bio-hybrid is an example of mixed societies between ‘hard artificial and ‘wet natural life, which enables an interaction between natural and artificial ecologies. They form an embodied, self-organizing, and distributed cognitive system which is supposed to grow and develop over long periods of time resulting in the creation of meaningful architectural structures. A key idea is to assign equal roles to robots and plants in order to create a highly integrated, symbiotic system. Besides the gain of knowledge, this project has the objective to cre-ate a bio-hybrid system with a defined function and application – growing architectural artifacts

Synchronized Artificial Natures: The Secret Life of Trees Connecting York, Delft and Alicante

This paper presents an experiment that explored teaching limits in architecture and computational arts. Three universities (York, Tu-Delft and Alicante) collaborated, commissioning and producing three Interactive scenographic spaces. These were formed by visitors, artificial trees as well as reactive technologies and emulated the way in which fungi communicate by connecting their roots underground. Over the four months of duration of the experiment, students learnt about programming resources in contemporary musical scenographic creation; graphic resources and digital manufacturing for 3D printing; component design; Arduino programming; and interfaces such as the “Game of Life” to explain the project in terms of cooperating particles. Theoretical backgrounds such as the architecture of contingency, readings such as “the secret life of the trees” by Wohlleben and performance practices such as “A-volve” by Mignonneau and Sommerer or “Hylozoic series” by Philip Beesley were approached in the workshop. The ultimate goals of this teaching practice described more explicitly in the paper include: understanding the ways in which communities cooperate; synchronous communication between scenic spaces as well as transparent design processes; and efforts to reduce excessive subject learning encapsulation in new Degrees based on the Bologna model

Flora robotica -- An Architectural System Combining Living Natural Plants and Distributed Robots

Key to our project flora robotica is the idea of creating a bio-hybrid system of tightly coupled natural plants and distributed robots to grow architectural artifacts and spaces. Our motivation with this ground research project is to lay a principled foundation towards the design and implementation of living architectural systems that provide functionalities beyond those of orthodox building practice, such as self-repair, material accumulation and self-organization. Plants and robots work together to create a living organism that is inhabited by human beings. User-defined design objectives help to steer the directional growth of the plants, but also the system's interactions with its inhabitants determine locations where growth is prohibited or desired (e.g., partitions, windows, occupiable space). We report our plant species selection process and aspects of living architecture. A leitmotif of our project is the rich concept of braiding: braids are produced by robots from continuous material and serve as both scaffolds and initial architectural artifacts before plants take over and grow the desired architecture. We use light and hormones as attraction stimuli and far-red light as repelling stimulus to influence the plants. Applied sensors range from simple proximity sensing to detect the presence of plants to sophisticated sensing technology, such as electrophysiology and measurements of sap flow. We conclude by discussing our anticipated final demonstrator that integrates key features of flora robotica, such as the continuous growth process of architectural artifacts and self-repair of living architecture.Comment: 16 pages, 12 figure

Towards a Plant Bio-Machine

Plants are very efficient computing machines. They are able to sense diverse environmental conditions and quickly react through chemical and electrical signaling. In this paper, we present an interface between plants and machines (a cybernetic plant), with the goal of augmenting the capabilities of plants towards the creation of plant biosensors. We implement a data acquisition system able to stimulate the plant through different electrical signals, as well as record the electrical activity of plants in response to changing electrical stimulations, light conditions, and chemicals. The results serve as a proof of concept that sensing capabilities of plants are a viable option for the development of plant bio-machines. Different future scenarios (some speculative) are discussed. The work herein is carried out as a collaboration between the EU project Flora Robotica and the EU project NASCENCE

WatchPlant: Networked Bio-hybrid Systems for Pollution Monitoring of Urban Areas

[EN] Growing cities are a world-wide phenomenon and simultaneously awareness about potential dangers due to air pollution, heat, and pathogens is increasing. Integrated and permanent monitoring of environmental features in cities can help to establish an early warning system and to provide data for policy makers. In our new project `WatchPlant,¿ we propose a green approach for urban monitoring by a network of sensors tightly coupled with natural plants. We want to develop a sustainable, energy-efficient bio-hybrid system that harvests energy from living plants and utilizes methods of phytosensing, that is, using natural plants as sensors. We present our concept, here with focus on Alife-related methods operating on the gathered plant data and the bio-hybrid network. With a self-organizing network of sensors, that are alive, we hope to contribute to our future of livable green cities.Project WatchPlant has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the FET grant agreement, no. 101017899. Project Biohybrids is funded by H2020 program, grant agreement no. 945773.Hamann, H.; Bogdan, S.; Diaz-Espejo, A.; García-Carmona, L.; Hernandez-Santana, V.; Kernbach, S.; Kernbach, A.... (2021). WatchPlant: Networked Bio-hybrid Systems for Pollution Monitoring of Urban Areas. MIT Press. 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1162/isal_a_003771

A Robot to Shape your Natural Plant: The Machine Learning Approach to Model and Control Bio-Hybrid Systems

Bio-hybrid systems---close couplings of natural organisms with technology---are high potential and still underexplored. In existing work, robots have mostly influenced group behaviors of animals. We explore the possibilities of mixing robots with natural plants, merging useful attributes. Significant synergies arise by combining the plants' ability to efficiently produce shaped material and the robots' ability to extend sensing and decision-making behaviors. However, programming robots to control plant motion and shape requires good knowledge of complex plant behaviors. Therefore, we use machine learning to create a holistic plant model and evolve robot controllers. As a benchmark task we choose obstacle avoidance. We use computer vision to construct a model of plant stem stiffening and motion dynamics by training an LSTM network. The LSTM network acts as a forward model predicting change in the plant, driving the evolution of neural network robot controllers. The evolved controllers augment the plants' natural light-finding and tissue-stiffening behaviors to avoid obstacles and grow desired shapes. We successfully verify the robot controllers and bio-hybrid behavior in reality, with a physical setup and actual plants

La Vida Secreta De Los Árboles: espacios escénicos sincronizados y naturalezas reactivas (Game of Life 1970 versión Alicante 2017)

Esta comunicación explica un experimento de colaboración y exploración de límites docentes disciplinares en arquitectura y artes computacionales llevado a cabo por tres universidades (York, Tu-Delft y Alicante) mediante la puesta en servicio de espacios escenográficos interactivos formados por visitantes, árboles artificiales y tecnologías reactivas que emulaban el modo de comunicación de hongos que conectan raíces bajo tierra. Durante cuatro meses que duró la experiencia, se produjeron aprendizajes en recursos de programación provenientes de la creación escenográfica musical contemporánea; en recursos gráficos y de fabricación digital para impresora 3D; en diseño de componentes; en programación mediante Arduino; en interfaces como el "Game of Life" para explicar el proyecto en clave de partículas que cooperan. Respaldos teóricos como la arquitectura de la contingencia, lecturas como "la vida secreta de los árboles" de Wohlleben y prácticas performaticas como "A-volve" de Mignonneau y Sommerer o "Hylozoic series" de Philip Beesley acompañaron el taller. Objetivos últimos de esta práctica docente son la comprensión de modos de cooperar de las comunidades; la comunicación sincrónica entre espacios escénicos; el énfasis en los procesos de diseño; y la búsqueda de fórmulas para reducir el encapsulamiento de aprendizajes del modelo Bolonia

Hybrid Societies : Challenges and Perspectives in the Design of Collective Behavior in Self-organizing Systems

Hybrid societies are self-organizing, collective systems, which are composed of different components, for example, natural and artificial parts (bio-hybrid) or human beings interacting with and through technical systems (socio-technical). Many different disciplines investigate methods and systems closely related to the design of hybrid societies. A stronger collaboration between these disciplines could allow for re-use of methods and create significant synergies. We identify three main areas of challenges in the design of self-organizing hybrid societies. First, we identify the formalization challenge. There is an urgent need for a generic model that allows a description and comparison of collective hybrid societies. Second, we identify the system design challenge. Starting from the formal specification of the system, we need to develop an integrated design process. Third, we identify the challenge of interdisciplinarity. Current research on self-organizing hybrid societies stretches over many different fields and hence requires the re-use and synthesis of methods at intersections between disciplines. We then conclude by presenting our perspective for future approaches with high potential in this area

Evolutionary Developmental Soft Robotics As a Framework to Study Intelligence and Adaptive Behavior in Animals and Plants

In this paper, a comprehensive methodology and simulation framework will be reviewed, designed in order to study the emergence of adaptive and intelligent behavior in generic soft-bodied creatures. By incorporating artificial evolutionary and developmental processes, the system allows to evolve complete creatures (brain, body, developmental properties, sensory, control system, etc.) for different task environments. Whether the evolved creatures will resemble animals or plants is in general not known a priori, and depends on the specific task environment set up by the experimenter. In this regard, the system may offer a unique opportunity to explore differences and similarities between these two worlds. Different material properties can be simulated and optimized, from a continuum of soft/stiff materials, to the interconnection of heterogeneous structures, both found in animals and plants alike. The adopted genetic encoding and simulation environment are particularly suitable in order to evolve distributed sensory and control systems, which play a particularly important role in plants. After a general description of the system some case studies will be presented, focusing on the emergent properties of the evolved creatures. Particular emphasis will be on some unifying concepts that are thought to play an important role in the emergence of intelligent and adaptive behavior across both the animal and plant kingdoms, such as morphological computation and morphological developmental plasticity. Overall, with this paper, we hope to draw attention on set of tools, methodologies, ideas and results, which may be relevant to researchers interested in plant-inspired robotics and intelligence