Ecological Robotics
My research in ecological robotics explores how robots can be used to plant and sense land- scapes. I have designed robotic processes for planting algorithmically generated designs and am experimenting with the use of unmanned ground vehicles for planting and sensing landscapes at scale. The aim of this research is to use robotics to catalyze emergent ecological processes.
Contents
Robotic Planting
Robotic Planting We are developing robotic processes for planting seeds in algorithmically generated designs. In the first phase of this project we developed a method for robotically extruding seeds in a paste of clay and planting media. As a proof of concept we demonstrated how algorithms can generate precise planting patterns such as pseudorandom gradients. We are investigating alternative planting processes, integrating sensors into the system, and integrating the system onto an unmanned ground vehicle for landscape-scale planting. We envision unmanned ground vehicles with seed printing systems planting entire landscapes with algorithmic designs. The team leads are Brendan Harmon and Hye Yeon Nam. This research was funded by an LSU Faculty Research Grant.
Papers
Harmon, Brendan and Hye Yeon Nam. 2023. “Ecological Robotics”. In: Journal of Digital Landscape Architecture 8, pp. 486–492. url: https://doi.org/10.14627/537740051.
Harmon, Brendan A, Hye Yeon Nam, Hunter Gilbert, and Nasrin Iravani. 2022. “Living Typography: Robotically Printing a Living Typeface”. In: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts. New Orleans, LA, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. url: https://doi.org/10.1145/3491101.3519894.
Awards
Living Typography, 2023 Type Directors Club (TDC) Awards
Robotic Sensing
Robotic Sensing We are exploring how robots – from drones to unmanned ground vehicles – can sense landscapes. We are studying how landscapes can be captured and represented with technologies such as multispectral sensors, real-time lidar, and radiance fields.