Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Unholy merger – Plant + Machine

In brief : A combination of trees and robots to produce a league of self powered energy driven vehicular bots.

As a student of biology I found it very interesting to learn that plants synthesize their own food by photosynthesis and also store the extra energy generated as fruits which the non energy generating creatures utilize for existence.

When you look at the differences between plants and animals it is very interesting to note that plants generate food but don’t have a brain as such to analyze the surroundings. While animals on the other hand, have a brain to understand the surroundings cannot produce their own food.

It’s as if nature has intentionally separated the two so that the creatures have a goal on the short term and a purpose on the long term.

As creatures at the top of the food chain, we have taken the leisure of developing robots to mimic creatures around us.

And we have mimicked the solar energy generated by plants in the form of solar powered cars, robots, lights, calculator, clocks, cookers... there are even entire villages that run solely on solar energy.

At this point we must notice that on one hand we have plants which are generating this energy, while on the other hand there are these robos using solar energy to power themselves.

So i thought, why not create a sort of merger that is half plant, half machine which can generate its own energy, release oxygen to the environment, store the surplus as food and do useful work in the process...

Since its isolated from nature in the sense of the dependence on purpose, this might as well be the solution to today’s global warming and green house effect phenomenon.

Here is the catch:
We have to notice that most advantages come at a heavy price.

For instance, plants send water from roots to the leaves by the process of reverse osmosis; so this new genere of creatures will have to have both locomotive ability as well as the ability to work on the given task, and be able to root into the earth to generate its energy. 

As a solution:
I had once imagined that we could grow trees on top of machines but i am not aware of such an experiment. There could be mud filled into the cavity to grow plants, but this is easier said than done in most practical processes. The roots might interefere with the wiring and circuitry of the machine thus making it hard for repairs.

Then i imagined that we could develop robots that can themselves root along with plants thus solving both the above problems, but i am not aware of such a technology either.


Plant + Animal seems pretty awesome what do you think of Plants + Birds? (^_~) [flying plants]

5 comments:

  1. Macha ... full blogging now! nice ideas but liked ur proximity one better :)

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  2. oh... thanks da. This is a very old idea which had creeped in and i had tried discussing it with abhilash. Unfortunately i had got the same response... (~_^)

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