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

Heiko Hamann; Mostafa Wahby; Thomas Schmickl; Payam Zahadat; Daniel Hofstadler; Kasper Støy; Sebastian Risi; Andres Faina; Frank Veenstra; Serge Kernbach; Igor Kuksin; Olga Kernbach; Phil Ayers; Przemyslaw Wojtaszek

doi:10.1109/SSCI.2015.158

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

Heiko Hamann, Mostafa Wahby, Thomas Schmickl, Payam Zahadat, Daniel Hofstadler, Kasper Støy, Sebastian Risi, Andres Faina, Frank Veenstra, Serge Kernbach, Igor Kuksin, Olga Kernbach, Phil Ayers, Przemyslaw Wojtaszek

Research output: Conference Article in Proceeding or Book/Report chapter › Article in proceedings › Research › peer-review

Abstract

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 natural and artificial components. In this paper we motivate and present the research program of the project flora robotica. 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 architectural 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 create a bio-hybrid system with a defined function and application -- growing architectural artifacts.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Computational Intelligence, 2015 IEEE Symposium Series on
Number of pages	8
Publisher	IEEE
Publication date	2015
Pages	1102-1109
ISBN (Print)	978-1-4799-7560-0
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/SSCI.2015.158
Publication status	Published - 2015
Event	2015 IEEE Symposium on Artifical Life - Cape Town, South Africa Duration: 8 Dec 2015 → 10 Dec 2015 http://ieee-ssci.org.za:8080/IEEEALIFE/

Conference

Conference	2015 IEEE Symposium on Artifical Life
Country/Territory	South Africa
City	Cape Town
Period	08/12/2015 → 10/12/2015
Internet address	http://ieee-ssci.org.za:8080/IEEEALIFE/

Keywords

artificial life
bio-hybrid systems
plant-robot symbiosis
architectural artifacts
self-organizing systems

Access to Document

10.1109/SSCI.2015.158

IEEE-ALIFE-2015Accepted author manuscript, 4.57 MB

Cite this

Hamann, H., Wahby, M., Schmickl, T., Zahadat, P., Hofstadler, D., Støy, K., Risi, S., Faina, A., Veenstra, F., Kernbach, S., Kuksin, I., Kernbach, O., Ayers, P., & Wojtaszek, P. (2015). Flora Robotica – Mixed Societies of Symbiotic Robot-Plant Bio-Hybrids. In Computational Intelligence, 2015 IEEE Symposium Series on (pp. 1102-1109). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/SSCI.2015.158

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title = "Flora Robotica – Mixed Societies of Symbiotic Robot-Plant Bio-Hybrids",

abstract = "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 natural and artificial components. In this paper we motivate and present the research program of the project flora robotica. 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 architectural 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 create a bio-hybrid system with a defined function and application -- growing architectural artifacts.",

keywords = "artificial life, bio-hybrid systems, plant-robot symbiosis, architectural artifacts, self-organizing systems",

author = "Heiko Hamann and Mostafa Wahby and Thomas Schmickl and Payam Zahadat and Daniel Hofstadler and Kasper St{\o}y and Sebastian Risi and Andres Faina and Frank Veenstra and Serge Kernbach and Igor Kuksin and Olga Kernbach and Phil Ayers and Przemyslaw Wojtaszek",

year = "2015",

doi = "10.1109/SSCI.2015.158",

language = "English",

isbn = "978-1-4799-7560-0",

pages = "1102--1109",

booktitle = "Computational Intelligence, 2015 IEEE Symposium Series on",

publisher = "IEEE",

address = "United States",

note = "2015 IEEE Symposium on Artifical Life, IEEE ALIFE'15 ; Conference date: 08-12-2015 Through 10-12-2015",

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Hamann, H, Wahby, M, Schmickl, T, Zahadat, P, Hofstadler, D, Støy, K , Risi, S , Faina, A, Veenstra, F, Kernbach, S, Kuksin, I, Kernbach, O, Ayers, P & Wojtaszek, P 2015, Flora Robotica – Mixed Societies of Symbiotic Robot-Plant Bio-Hybrids. in Computational Intelligence, 2015 IEEE Symposium Series on. IEEE, pp. 1102-1109, 2015 IEEE Symposium on Artifical Life, Cape Town, South Africa, 08/12/2015. https://doi.org/10.1109/SSCI.2015.158

TY - GEN

T1 - Flora Robotica – Mixed Societies of Symbiotic Robot-Plant Bio-Hybrids

AU - Hamann, Heiko

AU - Wahby, Mostafa

AU - Schmickl, Thomas

AU - Zahadat, Payam

AU - Hofstadler, Daniel

AU - Støy, Kasper

AU - Risi, Sebastian

AU - Faina, Andres

AU - Veenstra, Frank

AU - Kernbach, Serge

AU - Kuksin, Igor

AU - Kernbach, Olga

AU - Ayers, Phil

AU - Wojtaszek, Przemyslaw

PY - 2015

Y1 - 2015

N2 - 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 natural and artificial components. In this paper we motivate and present the research program of the project flora robotica. 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 architectural 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 create a bio-hybrid system with a defined function and application -- growing architectural artifacts.

AB - 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 natural and artificial components. In this paper we motivate and present the research program of the project flora robotica. 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 architectural 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 create a bio-hybrid system with a defined function and application -- growing architectural artifacts.

KW - artificial life

KW - bio-hybrid systems

KW - plant-robot symbiosis

KW - architectural artifacts

KW - self-organizing systems

U2 - 10.1109/SSCI.2015.158

DO - 10.1109/SSCI.2015.158

M3 - Article in proceedings

SN - 978-1-4799-7560-0

SP - 1102

EP - 1109

BT - Computational Intelligence, 2015 IEEE Symposium Series on

PB - IEEE

T2 - 2015 IEEE Symposium on Artifical Life

Y2 - 8 December 2015 through 10 December 2015

ER -

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

Abstract

Conference

Keywords

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