22 May Henriette Bier is invited expert to the final review of the EU funded project Flora Robotica at University of Lübeck, Germany

https://www.florarobotica.eu

This project¹s objective is to develop and investigate closely linked symbiotic relationships between robots and natural plants and to explore the potentials of a plant-robot society able to produce architectural artifacts and living spaces.

The aim was to create a society of robot-plant bio-hybrids functioning as an embodied, self-organizing, and distributed cognitive system. The system grows and develops over long periods of time in interaction with humans resulting in the creation of meaningful architectural structures.

The robotic assemblies (‘artificial plants’) support and control the biological plants through appropriate scaffolding, watering, and stimuli that exploit the plants different tropisms (phototropism, gravitropism, thigmotropism). The natural plant, in turn, supports and controls the robotic plant by guiding it through growth (e.g., towards light) and supporting the weight of the robot in later growth phases.