Can Plants Sense Humans? Using Plants as Biosensors to Detect the Presence of Eurythmic Gestures
This paper describes the preliminary results of measuring the impact of human body movements on plants. The scope of this project is to investigate if a plant perceives human activity in its vicinity. In particular, we analyze the influence of eurythmic gestures of human actors on lettuce and beans....
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
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Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
2023
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/152037 |
| _version_ | 1811082115621584896 |
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| author | de la Cal, Luis Gloor, Peter A. Weinbeer, Moritz |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Collective Intelligence |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Collective Intelligence de la Cal, Luis Gloor, Peter A. Weinbeer, Moritz |
| author_sort | de la Cal, Luis |
| collection | MIT |
| description | This paper describes the preliminary results of measuring the impact of human body movements on plants. The scope of this project is to investigate if a plant perceives human activity in its vicinity. In particular, we analyze the influence of eurythmic gestures of human actors on lettuce and beans. In an eight-week experiment, we exposed rows of lettuce and beans to weekly eurythmic movements (similar to Qi Gong) of a eurythmist, while at the same time measuring changes in voltage between the roots and leaves of lettuce and beans using the plant spikerbox. We compared this experimental group of vegetables to a control group of vegetables whose voltage differential was also measured while not being exposed to eurythmy. We placed a plant spikerbox connected to lettuce or beans in the vegetable plot while the eurythmist was performing their gestures about 2 m away; a second spikerbox was connected to a control plant 20 m away. Using <i>t</i>-tests, we found a clear difference between the experimental and the control group, which was also verified with a machine learning model. In other words, the vegetables showed a noticeably different pattern in electric potentials in response to eurythmic gestures. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T11:57:49Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/152037 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T11:57:49Z |
| publishDate | 2023 |
| publisher | Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1520372024-01-05T18:13:29Z Can Plants Sense Humans? Using Plants as Biosensors to Detect the Presence of Eurythmic Gestures de la Cal, Luis Gloor, Peter A. Weinbeer, Moritz Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Collective Intelligence This paper describes the preliminary results of measuring the impact of human body movements on plants. The scope of this project is to investigate if a plant perceives human activity in its vicinity. In particular, we analyze the influence of eurythmic gestures of human actors on lettuce and beans. In an eight-week experiment, we exposed rows of lettuce and beans to weekly eurythmic movements (similar to Qi Gong) of a eurythmist, while at the same time measuring changes in voltage between the roots and leaves of lettuce and beans using the plant spikerbox. We compared this experimental group of vegetables to a control group of vegetables whose voltage differential was also measured while not being exposed to eurythmy. We placed a plant spikerbox connected to lettuce or beans in the vegetable plot while the eurythmist was performing their gestures about 2 m away; a second spikerbox was connected to a control plant 20 m away. Using <i>t</i>-tests, we found a clear difference between the experimental and the control group, which was also verified with a machine learning model. In other words, the vegetables showed a noticeably different pattern in electric potentials in response to eurythmic gestures. 2023-09-08T13:07:05Z 2023-09-08T13:07:05Z 2023-08-05 2023-08-11T14:33:35Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/152037 Sensors 23 (15): 6971 (2023) PUBLISHER_CC http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s23156971 Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ application/pdf Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute |
| spellingShingle | de la Cal, Luis Gloor, Peter A. Weinbeer, Moritz Can Plants Sense Humans? Using Plants as Biosensors to Detect the Presence of Eurythmic Gestures |
| title | Can Plants Sense Humans? Using Plants as Biosensors to Detect the Presence of Eurythmic Gestures |
| title_full | Can Plants Sense Humans? Using Plants as Biosensors to Detect the Presence of Eurythmic Gestures |
| title_fullStr | Can Plants Sense Humans? Using Plants as Biosensors to Detect the Presence of Eurythmic Gestures |
| title_full_unstemmed | Can Plants Sense Humans? Using Plants as Biosensors to Detect the Presence of Eurythmic Gestures |
| title_short | Can Plants Sense Humans? Using Plants as Biosensors to Detect the Presence of Eurythmic Gestures |
| title_sort | can plants sense humans using plants as biosensors to detect the presence of eurythmic gestures |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/152037 |
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