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Morphological Computation in Plant Seeds for a New Generation of Self-Burial and Flying Soft Robots

Plants have evolved different mechanisms to disperse from parent plants and improve germination to sustain their survival. The study of seed dispersal mechanisms, with the related structural and functional characteristics, is an active research topic for ecology, plant diversity, climate change, as...

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Autores principales: Mazzolai, Barbara, Mariani, Stefano, Ronzan, Marilena, Cecchini, Luca, Fiorello, Isabella, Cikalleshi, Kliton, Margheri, Laura
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8664382/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34901173
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2021.797556
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author Mazzolai, Barbara
Mariani, Stefano
Ronzan, Marilena
Cecchini, Luca
Fiorello, Isabella
Cikalleshi, Kliton
Margheri, Laura
author_facet Mazzolai, Barbara
Mariani, Stefano
Ronzan, Marilena
Cecchini, Luca
Fiorello, Isabella
Cikalleshi, Kliton
Margheri, Laura
author_sort Mazzolai, Barbara
collection PubMed
description Plants have evolved different mechanisms to disperse from parent plants and improve germination to sustain their survival. The study of seed dispersal mechanisms, with the related structural and functional characteristics, is an active research topic for ecology, plant diversity, climate change, as well as for its relevance for material science and engineering. The natural mechanisms of seed dispersal show a rich source of robust, highly adaptive, mass and energy efficient mechanisms for optimized passive flying, landing, crawling and drilling. The secret of seeds mobility is embodied in the structural features and anatomical characteristics of their tissues, which are designed to be selectively responsive to changes in the environmental conditions, and which make seeds one of the most fascinating examples of morphological computation in Nature. Particularly clever for their spatial mobility performance, are those seeds that use their morphology and structural characteristics to be carried by the wind and dispersed over great distances (i.e. “winged” and “parachute” seeds), and seeds able to move and penetrate in soil with a self-burial mechanism driven by their hygromorphic properties and morphological features. By looking at their motion mechanisms, new design principles can be extracted and used as inspiration for smart artificial systems endowed with embodied intelligence. This mini-review systematically collects, for the first time together, the morphological, structural, biomechanical and aerodynamic information from selected plant seeds relevant to take inspiration for engineering design of soft robots, and discusses potential future developments in the field across material science, plant biology, robotics and embodied intelligence.
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spelling pubmed-86643822021-12-11 Morphological Computation in Plant Seeds for a New Generation of Self-Burial and Flying Soft Robots Mazzolai, Barbara Mariani, Stefano Ronzan, Marilena Cecchini, Luca Fiorello, Isabella Cikalleshi, Kliton Margheri, Laura Front Robot AI Robotics and AI Plants have evolved different mechanisms to disperse from parent plants and improve germination to sustain their survival. The study of seed dispersal mechanisms, with the related structural and functional characteristics, is an active research topic for ecology, plant diversity, climate change, as well as for its relevance for material science and engineering. The natural mechanisms of seed dispersal show a rich source of robust, highly adaptive, mass and energy efficient mechanisms for optimized passive flying, landing, crawling and drilling. The secret of seeds mobility is embodied in the structural features and anatomical characteristics of their tissues, which are designed to be selectively responsive to changes in the environmental conditions, and which make seeds one of the most fascinating examples of morphological computation in Nature. Particularly clever for their spatial mobility performance, are those seeds that use their morphology and structural characteristics to be carried by the wind and dispersed over great distances (i.e. “winged” and “parachute” seeds), and seeds able to move and penetrate in soil with a self-burial mechanism driven by their hygromorphic properties and morphological features. By looking at their motion mechanisms, new design principles can be extracted and used as inspiration for smart artificial systems endowed with embodied intelligence. This mini-review systematically collects, for the first time together, the morphological, structural, biomechanical and aerodynamic information from selected plant seeds relevant to take inspiration for engineering design of soft robots, and discusses potential future developments in the field across material science, plant biology, robotics and embodied intelligence. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-11-26 /pmc/articles/PMC8664382/ /pubmed/34901173 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2021.797556 Text en Copyright © 2021 Mazzolai, Mariani, Ronzan, Cecchini, Fiorello, Cikalleshi and Margheri. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Robotics and AI
Mazzolai, Barbara
Mariani, Stefano
Ronzan, Marilena
Cecchini, Luca
Fiorello, Isabella
Cikalleshi, Kliton
Margheri, Laura
Morphological Computation in Plant Seeds for a New Generation of Self-Burial and Flying Soft Robots
title Morphological Computation in Plant Seeds for a New Generation of Self-Burial and Flying Soft Robots
title_full Morphological Computation in Plant Seeds for a New Generation of Self-Burial and Flying Soft Robots
title_fullStr Morphological Computation in Plant Seeds for a New Generation of Self-Burial and Flying Soft Robots
title_full_unstemmed Morphological Computation in Plant Seeds for a New Generation of Self-Burial and Flying Soft Robots
title_short Morphological Computation in Plant Seeds for a New Generation of Self-Burial and Flying Soft Robots
title_sort morphological computation in plant seeds for a new generation of self-burial and flying soft robots
topic Robotics and AI
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8664382/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34901173
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2021.797556
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