Robotic Sensing and Stimuli Provision for Guided Plant GrowthMostafa Wahby 1, Mary Katherine Heinrich 1,5, Daniel Nicolas Hofstadler 2, Julian Petzold 1, Igor Kuksin 3, Payam Zahadat 2,4, Thomas Schmickl 2, Phil Ayres 5, Heiko Hamann 1
1Institute of Computer Engineering, University of Lübeck, 2Institute of Biology, Artificial Life Lab, University of Graz, 3Cybertronica UG, 4Department of Computer Science, IT University of Copenhagen, 5Centre for IT and Architecture, Royal Danish Academy
Distributed robot nodes provide sequences of blue light stimuli to steer the growth trajectories of climbing plants. By activating natural phototropism, the robots guide the plants through binary left-right decisions, growing them into predefined patterns that by contrast are not possible when the robots are dormant.