Robot gardens: an augmented reality prototype for plant-robot biohybrid systems

Robot Gardens are an augmented reality concept allowing a human user to design a biohybrid, plant-robot system. Plants growing from deliberately placed seeds are directed by robotic units that the user can position, configure and activate. For example, the robotic units may serve as physical shields or frames but they may also guide the plants' growth through emission of light. The biohybrid system evolves over time to redefine architectural spaces. This gives rise to the particular challenge of designing a biohybrid system before its actual implementation and potentially long before its developmental processes unfold. Here, an augmented reality interface featuring according simulation models of plants and robotic units allows one to explore the design space a priori. In this work, we present our first functional augmented reality prototype to design biohybrid systems. We provide details about its workings and elaborate on first empirical studies on its usability.