Plantoid
A plantoid is a robot or synthetic organism designed to look, act and grow like a plant. The concept was first scientifically published in 2010 (although models of comparable systems controlled by neural networks date back to 2003). Plantoids imitate plants through appearances and mimicking behaviors and internal processes (which function to keep the plant alive or to ensure its survival). A prototype for the European Commission is now in development by сonsortium of the following scientists: Dario Floreano, Barbara Mazzolai, Josep Samitier, Stefano Mancuso.
A plantoid incorporates an inherently distributed architecture consisting of autonomous and specialized modules. Modules can be modeled on plant parts such as the root cap and communicate to form a simple swarm intelligence. This kind of system may display great robustness and resilience. It is conjectured to be capable of energy harvesting and management, collective environmental awareness and many other functions.
In science fiction, while human-like robots (androids) are fairly frequent and animal-like biomorphic robots turn up occasionally, plantoids are quite rare. Exceptions occur in the novel Hearts, Hands and Voices (1992, US: The Broken Land) by Ian McDonald and the TV series Jikuu Senshi Spielban.
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