Plant Robots, They Really Grow on You

Are you unable to keep extremely low-maintenance plants alive? Do you constantly forget to water them (even if it’s only once a week) despite how many times you remind yourself? Well, then this robot might be the perfect match for you and your decomposing friend! Vincross, a startup company from 2017, has created a robot for everyone to be able to use! HEXA is a six-legged robot, standing half a foot tall, that wants to be your dance partner. Better yet, HEXA can be programmed and physically modified to carry, protect, and help your leafy-green friend! Inspired by a dead sunflower, Vancross founder, Tianqi Sun, said, “if it could [have] move[d] a little bit, take a 30-foot walk out of the shadow to where the other sunflowers were, it would have lived healthily.” Thus, this sunlight-chasing robot was created for our most passive organisms! Featured Image: Tianqi Sun/Vincross

Benefits of a Plant-Holding Robot

While the primary benefit of these robots are to help you take care of your plants, we’ve been trying to HERB our enthusiasm for some other possible uses for this thing around the office. More on that later. Meanwhile, HEXA is first outfitted with a dual-layer shell, which acts as a flowerpot for your desired plant! Then, you take the watering/sunlight information for your plant and input it into HEXA’s programing, so it knows how to best take care of your plant! In Tianqi Sun’s original post, it is unclear if there were any added sensors to detect moisture in the air or temperature, but they are possible additions for different iterations. Once HEXA is in your desired room, the robot will walk around in the shaded and sunny patches throughout the day. HEXA knows when your plant wants sun and when it doesn’t, so it will run to the sunlight and hide in the shade! To top it off, Hexa will do a grumpy dance for when it’s thirsty to remind you that your plant needs water. Now, hopefully HEXA’s adorable dances will be enough to remind you to water your plant! But there are many more reasons why HEXA is so neat! The first being that it can navigate obstacle courses. Metaphorically speaking, if you had a HEXA robot in your office, you could have it deliver funny messages to your coworkers because it has the capability to navigate through different terrains and climb stairs. Just some food for thought. But if you’re still not quite sold, then we’ve got just the feature for you. Dance Battles! If that’s not enough to make you want this robot, then we’re not sure what is. HEXA is a unique robot, because it allows for its users to create their own special programs and share them with others! Maybe HEXA can be modified to carry a cold beer and keep it out of the sunlight. Or it could hold your alarm clock and run away from you in the morning when it goes off! BeLEAF me, the opportunities are endless! Vincross utilizes GitHub to encourage users to collaborate, create, and share new skills for HEXA to perform! I guess you could call it a (photo)synthesis of information.     WATER you waiting for? PLANT yourself in front of this robot. HEXA is ready to help you take care of your plants, bug your coworkers, and wreck you in a dance battle.