Studio / Plant-Inspired Robots
Plant-Inspired Robot Design Metaphors for Ambient HRI
HRI ’26 Best Paper Honorable Mention
Victor Nikhil Antony, Adithya R. N., Sarah Derrick, Zhili Gong, Peter M. Donley, and Chien-Ming Huang
Plants offer a paradoxical model for interaction: they are ambient, low-demand presences that nonetheless shape atmosphere, routines, and relationships through temporal rhythms and subtle expressions. In contrast, most human-robot interaction (HRI) has been grounded in anthropomorphic and zoomorphic paradigms, producing overt, high-demand forms of engagement.
Using a Research through Design (RtD) methodology, we explore plants as metaphoric inspiration for HRI. We conducted iterative cycles of ideation, prototyping, and reflection to investigate what design primitives emerge from plant metaphors and morphologies, and how these primitives can be combined into expressive robotic forms.
ContributionsDrawing on a survey of plant life, we identified leaves, stems, flowers, and pots as key elements. Treating these elements as design primitives structured our prototyping process and provided scaffolding for translating plant metaphors into tangible robotic primitives.
A lightweight, string-driven mechanism printed in TPU. Pulling the string straightens the leaf; releasing it returns the leaf to its curled form, enabling gestures such as wilting, perking, or unfurling.
A concentric bellow mechanism, adapted from soft and continuum robots, supports gestures such as leaning, bowing, and swaying that evoke the motion of plant stems.
Containers of other primitives and extensions of expression. Some pots turned or swayed; others moved across the surface, offering different kinds of presence.
Our experiments with flowers were limited, exploring color, translucency, and the glow of embedded LEDs.
We constructed four plant-inspired robotic prototypes: Snake Plant, Flower Plant, Keeper Plant, and Dancing Pot. Each combines the primitives in distinct configurations, evoking new imaginaries around contextual and expressive possibilities.
Three actuated leaves mounted on a rotatable pot. When the pot rotates, the angled top cap produces a characteristic leaning motion, as if the plant is subtly shifting direction.
Placed on a desk, the plant mirrors a user’s posture: upright with good posture, drooping as posture deteriorates, and recovering when corrected. It greets the user at the start of the day and performs a small celebration at the end.
An actuated stem crowned with a flower on a rotating pot. Stem bending and pot rotation produce composite gestures that echo a sunflower orienting itself in its environment.
At a coffee table, the robot joins the conversational flow: turning toward active speakers, leaning toward quieter participants to invite inclusion, or gesturing toward shared objects to ease conversational lulls.
Drawing in part from the Venus flytrap, eight small leaves arranged around a central cavity curl inward to enclose or unfurl outward. Folding and blooming take on functional roles of holding and presenting.
Used as a pill organizer, the plant grips the box when medication is not due. At the appointed time, the leaves slowly unfurl and softly pulse as a nudge to take the medicine.
A mobile pot crowned with a fern-inspired, two-tier leaf arrangement. Juxtaposing locomotion with delicate leaf gestures explores how mobile robots and plant metaphors can enrich each other.
Positioned near a water dispenser, the plant approaches visitors and performs a short dance as they fill their glass, creating a playful sense of ambient presence.
To explore how plant-inspired robotic forms might be interpreted and re-imagined, we conducted three 90-minute design workshops with 11 participants aged 19 to 82; the third workshop consisted entirely of older adults. Participants were encouraged to touch, move, and manipulate the prototypes.
Participants annotated four video storyboards, each depicting an imaginary for a prototype, and discussed what felt expressive, what seemed confusing, and what they would change.
Pairs modified a storyboard or sketched a new interaction sequence, puppeting the prototypes or bodystorming to illustrate expressive timing and gesture.
Participants imagined new contexts and sketched speculative scenarios, envisioning morphology, temporality, behavior, and expressions.
Participants’ imaginaries reconfigured and built upon our prototypes, framing plant-inspired robots as ambient, expressive, and multifunctional artifacts woven into everyday routines.
Participants imagined classroom plant robots wilting as noise levels rose, and a family “garden” of robots, one per person, whose posture signals each member’s mood.
Extending the Snake Plant, participants envisioned reminders to move after sitting too long, to rest their eyes, or to refocus when distracted, using plant-like behaviors.
P11 imagined a plant-inspired reading lamp that gradually dims and shifts its posture as evening progresses, nudging the user toward rest.
P5 proposed a set of plant robots, each tied to a habit: one grows when a run is completed, another droops when journaling is skipped.
We consolidated reflections from the RtD process and insights from the workshops into design considerations organized along four axes.
The role, placement, and ecology of plants within a space shape how people live with them, and offer cues for situating robots as everyday artifacts.
Plant gestures such as swaying and drooping shift robotic expression toward more ambient, interpretive forms, but are rarely fixed in meaning.
Plants unfold across multiple timescales, from rapid movements to seasonal arcs of growth and decay, inviting behaviors that range from immediate reactions to long-term ambient signaling.
Plant inspiration can be rendered literally, abstractly, or as hybrids. Literal forms offer intuitive reading; abstract forms introduce ambiguity that invites interpretation.
“I don’t want more clutter. I have enough on my desk... why do I need another thing?”
P9, on the value and necessity of a new artifact
“Slouching for 5 seconds is ok, slouching for 1 hour is a problem.”
P1, updating the Snake Plant imaginary