Phytomechatronic Experiment #2
RoboLeaf was developed at Haystack Labs, a research program and residency founded by Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms. The initiative was designed to foster synergy among artists, designers, material scientists, machine builders, and coders. Together, we converged at Haystack’s Atlantic Coast campus to explore the intersection of emergent digital fabrication technologies and conventional studio craft.
Neil Gershenfeld, the founder of FabLab, facilitated the week-long program. In meetings that followed, he expressed an aspiration for technology to serve as “locally made meaningful machines.” This intention values machines and mechanisms that are meaningful and in service to local communities.
RoboLeaf envisions a tree that can protect itself from invasive insects like the Lymantria dispar caterpillar. It imagines an artificial intelligence that allows humans and trees to communicate and share intelligence and machine prosthetics that could enhance plant life. This prototype is a leaf mechanized with a unique folding pattern. When sensors on its robotic plant flesh detect predatory insects, the folds contract, and the leaf protects itself from being eaten.
While working on RoboLeaf at Haystack labs, Jack Forman, an MIT PhD student in material science, introduced me to his work with FibeRobo, a thermally-actuated liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) fiber that can be embedded or structured into textiles and enable silent and responsive interactions with shape-changing, fiber-based interfaces. We used FibeRobo to actuate the folds of RoboLeaf. The technologist Alan Grover and Fiber Artist Annet Couwenberg, both from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), were also influential to the project; Grover designed the circuitry that controlled the contractions and expansions of FibeRobo, and Couwenberg ’s presence in the weaving studio where we set up shop provided essential conceptual connections between the mechanisms of RoboLeaf and the history and context of fiber arts.