May 17  2024, Japan

Bioinspired robotics can emulate the growth-based movement of plants, for example, through the use of pneumatic actuators that extend the tip of a soft, everting growbot. This growth is part of a broader system for movement guidance and control.

Paco’s talk will explore how principles of Gibsonian ecological psychology can be applied to the active, directional control of a plant-inspired climbing growbot, which aims to reach a specific target, mimicking natural plant behavior. He will discuss how the ecological concepts of “information” and “control” elucidate the navigation of both plants and their robotic counterparts through their environments. He proposes investigating the timing control of growbots that utilize energy flows, which could provide all the necessary information for guiding their phototropic and target-oriented behaviors. Importantly, the control laws do not necessitate optic energy flows. Reality’s specification might not be confined to any single ambient energy array but could occur across sensory modalities in a higher-order format. To demonstrate perception through the growbot’s global ambient energy array, Paco will present research on the selective foraging behavior of Cuscuta parasites, which integrate various cues like light, volatile substances, and acoustic signals. A working hypothesis suggests that a Cuscuta-inspired growbot could modulate its growth patterns using the global energy array. By combining plant-inspired and ecological robotics, we aim to develop an unconventional toolkit for the robotics community, potentially opening new avenues for research and application.