Artist creates “Machete Plant”, a cyborg of a plant with a robotic arm

in hive-109160 •  2 years ago 

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(Screenshot / Vimeo / David Bowen)

Watch out vegans!

The artist David Bowen gave a plant the ability to “control” a robotic arm with a machete.

He connected electrodes to the leaves and wrote a code that converts the impulses in the plant into robotic commands.

Cyborg organisms not only exist in science fiction, they are also real developments.

As I’ve written before, engineers have modified insects to control their movement and use them instead of microrobots, which are currently difficult to create with current technology

On the other hand, plants (with rare exceptions like the Venus flytrap) don't move, and don't get much attention from engineers.

However, there are some projects that utilize plants.



MACHETE PLANT
The artist David Bowen has repeatedly created projects that combine living organisms and electronics and now has created a hybrid of a robot and a plant.

The cyborg consists of a philodendron pot and an xArm robotic arm with a machete attached to the end.

Bowen glued medical electrodes to the leaves, which read changes in electrical resistance that take place in the plant.

The electrodes are connected to an Arduino-type microcontroller, which converts these signals into commands for the robotic arm.

Due to this, the hand that holds the machete constantly makes chaotic movements.

Unfortunately, the artist does not explain what exactly the installation symbolizes, leaving it to the interpretation of the viewers.

Bowen only notes that the plant becomes the “brain” of the robot that controls the movements of the machete.

On another aspect, it’d be interesting to know the inner workings of the process and if the plant “feels” the presence of the arm.

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It would be interesting to see if such a plant could be trained to use the arm to signal a request for water or sunlight.

Water the plant more frequently when the arm is in one position and less frequently when it's not, and see if the plant "learns" to put the arm into the "watering" position when it needs water and moves it to another position when it has enough water.

That's interesting use for that gizmo. The Machete is a nice touch, tho: Feed me human or I'll stab you!

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