The plant that controls a machete with its "brain" (video)

Plants are basically inanimate living things. But the technology can make them control a robotic arm. And the consequences are quite disturbing…

The artist and designer David Bowens has created Plant machete, which is basically defined by its name. It is a plant that wields a machete with its “brain”. It achieves its purpose: to make us reflect on what it would mean if plants could handle a weapon.

Art, good art, is a powerful tool for make think. This machete plant attracts your attention because it proposes an impossible idea: that a plant can move an arm. And when he does, why wield a machete?

Is it a mechanism self defense Why do they feel attacked? Or a way to get revenge for all the abuses we commit against Nature? As a good artist, David Bowen offers no answers. It is up to us to find them.

How can a robotic arm move a plant?

As its creator explains, David Bowensin their websitethis facility allows a living plant controls a machete. The plant gun has a control system that reads and uses the electrical noises generated by a live philodendron, one of the most popular houseplants.

The system uses an open source microcontroller connected to the plant to read the electrical resistance signals that vary in the leaves of the plant. Using custom designed software, these signals are mapped in real time to the movements of the joints of the industrial robotic arm holding a machete.

The movements of the machete are determined from the information received from the plant. In essence, the plant is the brain of the robotic arm that controls the machete and determines how it swings, strikes, cuts and interacts in space.

It is true that the plant is unaware of what it is doingbut the image it generates is very powerful.

If we had before us a conscious plant equipped with a robotic arm, very few people would be able to hand him a gun. There is a covert feeling of guilt for how we treat the plant world in general. And that’s not counting that we also eat it…

with his plant that handles a machete with a robotic arm, David Bowens achieves its purpose that we see the flora with different eyes. They are inanimate beings, but they are alive. And sometimes we forget about that.