Daniel HofstadlerKarl-Franzens-Universität Graz | KFU Graz · Institute of Biology
Daniel Hofstadler
MS
About
24
Publications
12,096
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270
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
Daniel Hofstadler currently works at the Institute of Zoology, Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz. Their current project is 'Flora Robotica: Societies of Symbiotic Robot-Plant Bio-Hybrids as Social Architectural Artifacts'.
Additional affiliations
October 2008 - September 2013
Publications
Publications (24)
Honey bees live in colonies of thousands of individuals, that not only need to collaborate with each other but also to interact intensively with their ecosystem. A small group of robots operating in a honey bee colony and interacting with the queen bee, a central colony element, has the potential to change the collective behavior of the entire colo...
The ease of use and availability of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) recently pervaded a wide range of topics and applications. In nature conservation and for the management of protected areas (PAs), UAS are still not an established approach compared to other methods such as satellite-based remote sensing, although several research articles have alr...
We develop here a novel hypothesis that may generate a general research framework of how autonomous robots may act as a future contingency to counteract the ongoing ecological mass extinction process. We showcase several research projects that have undertaken first steps to generate the required prerequisites for such a technology-based conservatio...
Here we present the novel concept of a method called Ecosystem Hacking, in which the stability of decaying ecosystems is aimed to be supported by the introduction of biomimetic robots that interact with their natural counterparts. We briefly discuss previous research projects that established such robot-organism interactions with plants or animals...
The alluvial channel of the Langgriesgraben (Austria) is a highly active geomorphic riverine subcatchment of the Johnsbach River with intermittent discharge and braided river structures. The high sediment yield entails both issues and opportunities. For decades, the riverbed was exploited as a gravel pit. Today, as part of the Gesäuse National Park...
Nature has various approaches to manage the collective distribution of resources. The division of a honeybee colony into subgroups, the formation of ant trails to food sources, and the spread of tree branches to optimize the access to light are some examples of collective decision making for resource distribution. This paper investigates collective...
Biohybrid robotics takes an engineering approach to the expansion and exploitation of biological behaviors for application to automated tasks. Here we identify the construction of living buildings and infrastructure as a high-potential application domain for biohybrid robotics, and review technological advances relevant to its future development. C...
Robot systems are actively researched for manipulation of natural plants, typically restricted to agricultural automation activities such as harvest, irrigation, and mechanical weed control. Extending this research, we introduce here a novel methodology to manipulate the directional growth of plants via their natural mechanisms for signaling and ho...
Plant growth is a self-organized process incorporating distributed sensing, internal communication and morphology dynamics. We develop a distributed mechatronic system that autonomously interacts with natural climbing plants, steering their behaviours to grow user-defined shapes and patterns. Investigating this bio-hybrid system paves the way towar...
Bio-hybrid systems---close couplings of natural organisms with technology---are high potential and still underexplored. In existing work, robots have mostly influenced group behaviors of animals. We explore the possibilities of mixing robots with natural plants, merging useful attributes. Significant synergies arise by combining the plants' ability...
Natural plants are exemplars of adaptation through self-organisation and collective decision making. As such, they provide a rich source of inspiration for adaptive mechanisms in artificial systems. Plant growth - a structure development mechanism of continuous material accumulation that expresses encoded morphological features through environmenta...
Mixing societies of natural and artificial systems can provide interesting and potentially fruitful research targets. Here we mix robotic setups and natural plants in order to steer the motion behavior of plants while growing. The robotic setup uses a camera to observe the plant and uses a pair of light sources to trigger phototropic response, stee...
Key to our project flora robotica is the idea of creating a bio-hybrid system of tightly coupled natural plants and distributed robots to grow architectural artifacts and spaces. Our motivation with this ground research project is to lay a principled foundation towards the design and implementation of living architectural systems that provide funct...
Morphology of an artificial structure can be designed beforehand or it can be developed over time via interactions between different parts of the structure. Since structures are supposed to sustain and act in their surrounding environments, a successful generative process needs to consider both the global and local effects of environment during mor...
![Figure 5: Author's illustration from [20] of two examples of...](profile/Heiko-Hamann/publication/320056703/figure/fig44/AS:668470010191889@1536387078782/Authors-illustration-from-20-of-two-examples-of-transitions-of-the-states-of-single_Q320.jpg)
We develop appropriate architectural representations (modeling methods, simulation and systems of notation) that integrate models of robot mechanics and its control with relevant biological models (e.g., projection of growth, leaf-cover and structural strength models) to support the design, envisioning and evaluation of architectural flora robotica...
The self-organizing bio-hybrid collaboration of robots and natural plants allows for a variety of interesting applications. As an example we investigate how robots can be used to control the growth and motion of a natural plant, using LEDs to provide stimuli. We follow an evolutionary robotics approach where task performance is determined by monito...
Self-organized construction with continuous, structured building material, as opposed to modular units, offers new challenges to the robot-based construction process and lends the opportunity for increased flexibility in constructed artifact properties, such as shape and deformation. As an example investigation, we look at continuous filaments orga...
Besides the life-as-it-could-be driver of artificial life research there is also the concept of extending natural life by creating hybrids or mixed societies that are built from
natural and artificial components. In this paper we motivate and present the research program of the project flora robotica. Our objective is to develop and to investigate...
This contribution is based on the six presentations given at the Special Interest Group meeting on Mathematical modelling of fungal growth and function held during IMC9. The topics covered aspects of fungal growth ranging across several orders of magnitude of spatial and temporal scales from the bio-mechanics of spore ejection, vesicle trafficking...
Questions
Question (1)
There's been some new insights in both fields, and there seem to be major overlappings, but I was looking for some sort of quantitative analysis of the commonalities, and, almost more importantly, differences between detected (abundances of) mRNAs and proteins.
Projects
Project (1)
flora robotica is a 4 year project funded under the EU-Horizon 2020 Future and Emerging Technologies Proactive Action. The project runs from April 2015 – March 2019.
The project’s objective is to develop and investigate closely linked symbiotic relationships between robots and natural plants and to explore the potentials of a plant-robot society able to produce architectural artifacts and living spaces.
flora robotica responds to the work-programme theme ‘Knowing, doing and being: cognition beyond problem solving’, the goal of which is to establish new foundations for future robotics and other artificial cognitive systems with clear progress beyond current capabilities and design concepts.
The project assembles a highly cross disciplinary team drawn from the fields of Computer Science, Robotics, Molecular and Cellular Biology, Zoology, Advanced Mechatronics & Environmental Sensing and Architecture.
