Tesi etd-04222017-104829
Link copiato negli appunti
Tipo di tesi
Perfezionamento
Autore
DEL DOTTORE, EMANUELA
URN
etd-04222017-104829
Titolo
Study and Implementation of Algorithms Inspired by Movements and Control Strategies of Plant Roots
Settore scientifico disciplinare
ING-IND/34
Corso di studi
INGEGNERIA - Biorobotics
Commissione
relatore LASCHI, CECILIA
Parole chiave
- Behavior analysis
- Behavior-based control
- Bioinspiration
- Plant-inspired robot
- Robot control
Data inizio appello
05/06/2017;
Disponibilità
completa
Riassunto analitico
Aim of the present work is to implement innovative solutions for the
movements and control of plant-inspired robots, by extracting fundamental
behavioral rules from plant roots.
Biological systems have been source of inspiration for engineers and roboticists
since long time; especially animals, or even simpler organisms such as bacteria,
have inspired morphology and behavior of robots and optimization algorithms.
Plants have instead been taken as models in robotics only relatively recently. Being
sessile organisms and devoid of a neural system, they have rarely sparked interest
in robotics community. On the contrary, plants show a numerous series of
movements and communication abilities that can offer new cues for designing
innovative robots for exploration tasks.
In particular, root apparatus and its apexes represent the organ delegates to
anchor and forage the whole plant system and has to mediate among many stimuli
and needs. These observations motivated the present dissertation which presents a
series of data from literature and purposely performed experiments to extract
specifications and design rules from plant roots for the development of innovative
penetration strategies and control algorithms.
Results of a deep study on a peculiar movement observed in plant roots, i.e.,
circumnutation, demonstrate its role in optimizing root soil penetration. Such
strategy can indeed be considered relevant for both real plants and artificial
penetration devices, helping to employ less forces and energy in digging tasks.
Moreover, the same movement has been investigated as mechanism in plant roots
for resources exploration and exploitation; by comparing it with the oscillatory
movement actuated during chemical stimulation by a relatively similar simple
organism, i.e., Drosophila larvae.
Two different control strategies are also presented, which take inspiration from
tropic responses and from the uptake-kinetic of nutrients by roots. In particular,
the latter, because of a distributed knowledge achieved by internal communication
channels, reveals an interesting emerging collaborative behavior among roots for the
optimization of plant wellness.
All the investigated strategies are implemented for the control of a plant-inspired
robot, called Plantoid, which nicely validates the hypothesis on circumnutations’
role and collaborative behavior done on the biological counterpart.
The expected impacts of present study are twofold: I) to demonstrate that plant
roots are a valid model for the realization of innovative technological solutions,
specifically control strategies, potentially useful to expand algorithms in the swarm
intelligence field; II) to provide an effective approach for the validation of biological
hypotheses formulated on plant movements and behavior.
movements and control of plant-inspired robots, by extracting fundamental
behavioral rules from plant roots.
Biological systems have been source of inspiration for engineers and roboticists
since long time; especially animals, or even simpler organisms such as bacteria,
have inspired morphology and behavior of robots and optimization algorithms.
Plants have instead been taken as models in robotics only relatively recently. Being
sessile organisms and devoid of a neural system, they have rarely sparked interest
in robotics community. On the contrary, plants show a numerous series of
movements and communication abilities that can offer new cues for designing
innovative robots for exploration tasks.
In particular, root apparatus and its apexes represent the organ delegates to
anchor and forage the whole plant system and has to mediate among many stimuli
and needs. These observations motivated the present dissertation which presents a
series of data from literature and purposely performed experiments to extract
specifications and design rules from plant roots for the development of innovative
penetration strategies and control algorithms.
Results of a deep study on a peculiar movement observed in plant roots, i.e.,
circumnutation, demonstrate its role in optimizing root soil penetration. Such
strategy can indeed be considered relevant for both real plants and artificial
penetration devices, helping to employ less forces and energy in digging tasks.
Moreover, the same movement has been investigated as mechanism in plant roots
for resources exploration and exploitation; by comparing it with the oscillatory
movement actuated during chemical stimulation by a relatively similar simple
organism, i.e., Drosophila larvae.
Two different control strategies are also presented, which take inspiration from
tropic responses and from the uptake-kinetic of nutrients by roots. In particular,
the latter, because of a distributed knowledge achieved by internal communication
channels, reveals an interesting emerging collaborative behavior among roots for the
optimization of plant wellness.
All the investigated strategies are implemented for the control of a plant-inspired
robot, called Plantoid, which nicely validates the hypothesis on circumnutations’
role and collaborative behavior done on the biological counterpart.
The expected impacts of present study are twofold: I) to demonstrate that plant
roots are a valid model for the realization of innovative technological solutions,
specifically control strategies, potentially useful to expand algorithms in the swarm
intelligence field; II) to provide an effective approach for the validation of biological
hypotheses formulated on plant movements and behavior.
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