Meet this undeniably cool robotic creature, i.e., a machete plant, that has been developed by David Bowen, and designboom recently revealed this emerging technology. The robotic machine works in an interesting way that enables a living plant to control a machete through the use of the robotic arm. However, it should be noted that this is not the first time Bowen has come up with this technology, as many other engineers have presented different plans previously in an attempt to get their hands on such type of impressive automation.
The function of this robotic machine has been explained by Bowen on the website. According to him, the plant controls the machete through its deployed control system which has the ability to detect, read and identify different electrical noises in a “live philodendron”. In addition to this, an open-source microcontroller has also been used in the system that works by reading different resistance signals across the leaves of the plants. It should be noted that the connection only establishes when the microcontroller is attached to the plant.
Thus, to transform the robotic movements into a real-time technology, custom software is used that picks up the movements of the machete from the plant and presents them in an impressive way. You would be amazed to know that all the movements of the machete are controlled by the plant because it acts as a “brain” of the robotic machine and dictates when to swing, jab, and interact in space. However, a lot of similar technologies have been developed by engineers in which the robots have been controlled through brain signals.
One such example can be found in the prototype developed by MIT scientists in 2018, in which they have trained robots through the use of brain signals of human beings that are found in an unconscious brain. Not only this, but in 2020, Japanese scientists have also come up with a breakthrough in which they became successful in controlling a mini toy Gundam robot with the signals of a human brain.
However, this plant machete technology opens a door to new possibilities in which human beings can also play an important role. As of now, the technology is limited to the use of plant signals only.