AUTHOR=Frazier P. Adrian , Jamone Lorenzo , Althoefer Kaspar , Calvo Paco TITLE=Plant Bioinspired Ecological Robotics JOURNAL=Frontiers in Robotics and AI VOLUME=7 YEAR=2020 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/robotics-and-ai/articles/10.3389/frobt.2020.00079 DOI=10.3389/frobt.2020.00079 ISSN=2296-9144 ABSTRACT=

Plants are movers, but the nature of their movement differs dramatically from that of creatures that move their whole body from point A to point B. Plants grow to where they are going. Bio-inspired robotics sometimes emulates plants' growth-based movement; but growing is part of a broader system of movement guidance and control. We argue that ecological psychology's conception of “information” and “control” can simultaneously make sense of what it means for a plant to navigate its environment and provide a control scheme for the design of ecological plant-inspired robotics. In this effort, we will outline several control laws and give special consideration to the class of control laws identified by tau theory, such as time to contact.