Robots in the Garden: Artificial Intelligence and Adaptive Landscapes
This project addresses the problem of developing adaptive urban agriculture for landscape architects, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing robotics and AI technologies.
The paper tackles the integration of artificial intelligence into urban ecosystems by introducing ELUA, a robotic system for adaptive gardening, resulting in a demonstration of responsive landscape research with two gantry robots capable of seeding, watering, weeding, and pruning.
This paper introduces ELUA, the Ecological Laboratory for Urban Agriculture, a collaboration among landscape architects, architects and computer scientists who specialize in artificial intelligence, robotics and computer vision. ELUA has two gantry robots, one indoors and the other outside on the rooftop of a 6-story campus building. Each robot can seed, water, weed, and prune in its garden. To support responsive landscape research, ELUA also includes sensor arrays, an AI-powered camera, and an extensive network infrastructure. This project demonstrates a way to integrate artificial intelligence into an evolving urban ecosystem, and encourages landscape architects to develop an adaptive design framework where design becomes a long-term engagement with the environment.