Hi Everybody,

Our first IndaPlant, a robotic support that allows houseplants to freely seek sunlight and water, is up and running. The work debuted this week at the Secret Life of Plants Symposium at Princeton University and will shown at the 2013 International Symposium on Electronic Art in three weeks. If you are in Sydney, please join us! https://www.isea2013.org.

This is the first FaunaBorg test run! This still was taken form a video of the project that can be found at: https://vimeo.com/65444659

This is the first FaunaBorg test run! This still was taken form a video of the project that can be found at: https://vimeo.com/65444659

In advance of the opening at ISEA, I posted a rough video short of the project titled IndaPlant Project: An Act of Trans-Species Giving, on vimeo: https://vimeo.com/65444659 last week. The video describes the making of the first IndaPlant, shows the initial faunaborg test run and describes the multiple stages of the project.

Once the video was posted, Christopher Mims wrote a lovely article about the project on Quartz https://qz.com/82541/robotic-exoskeleton-turns-houseplants-into-drones/. That story was apparently picked up by the Daily Mail in the UK which ran it as their lead science and technology story (with a great picture of a wilted potted plant) on Monday, May 13th, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2321914/Plant-bot-worlds-robot-turns-household-plants-light-seeking-drones.html.

Just now, as I was about to write this post, I did a fast Google search on the project and first found, on French YouTube, part of the video with no voice over and some sort of ominous dance music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A9g_k7KAkc. It had two hundred hits (!) If any of you know French–please let me know what the write up says.

I then proceeded to find on Google five pages of posts/articles and blogs about the project in many languages. So, if any of you can read any of these posts, let me know what you think. Cheers, Professor Demaray

In Spanish: https://mrcitech.blogspot.fr/2013/05/robot-indaplant-mantiene-plantas-cerca.html

https://es.gizmodo.com/indaplant-el-vehiculo-autonomo-arduino-para-ficus-con-500417824 

https://www.chw.net/2013/05/conoce-a-indaplant-el-dispositivo-que-convierte-las-plantas-en-robots/

http://www.pcdemano.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article

 https://www.frontera.info/EdicionEnLinea/Notas/CienciayTecnologia/09052013/701422-Mantiene-robot-a-plantas-cerca-de-luz-solar.aspx 

https://www.actualidadgadget.com/robot-mantiene-plantas-cerca-de-la-luz-del-sol/

In French: http://fr.500gadgets.com/page/meet-indaplant-device-that-turns-plants-into-robots.html

In English: http://nexttruth.com/?p=9526

https://www.extremetech.com/author/jplafke

http://news.discovery.com/tech/robotics/exoskeleton-helps-plant-find-sun-and-water-130514.htm 

Chinese/English: https://biweekly.isvoc.com/category/indaplant

https://tech.sina.com.cn/d/2013-05-15/10098341846.shtml

https://post.discovery.tom.com/s/060009316086.html

https://firefox.huanqiu.com/tech/discovery/2013-05/3937696.html

http://scitech.people.com.cn/BIG5/n/2013/0516/c1007-21504013.html

https://www.cunbox.com/news/kj/kxts/2013/0516/49324.html

http://news.cnyes.com/Content/20130515/KH7W0XEN9NY5A.shtml?c=headline_sitehead