This sun-chasing robot will keep your plants alive

Sun Tianqi built a roving robot to ensure his plants get the freedom -- and sunlight -- they deserve.

Have you ever noticed that when you pop a plant on the windowsill, it’ll eventually start growing in the direction of the sunlight?

That’s the ‘heliotropic’ effect. Most living systems inherently reach or search for light; the element which ensures our survival.

This poses a conundrum for the succulents and plants that don’t get the sunniest spots in your home. Without sufficient sunlight, your plants will eventually die.

However, not all hope is lost, thanks to robotics.

A Chinese roboticist and entrepreneur, Sun Tianqi, has created a six-legged toy robot known as Hexa, made by his company Vincross, to carry a potted plant on its back.              

The aim is that the robo-plant will move towards sunlight as it’s needed throughout the day.

It looks like a giant crab with a leafy head. But acts a little like a... dog?

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Moving towards light.

Besides moving toward sunshine when needed, it retreats to shade when it’s had enough.

That's enough sun for today, boy.

It'll 'play' with a human if you tap its exterior, and it does a little dance when your plant needs watering.

High ten, Hexa!

Tianqi says that the idea for the Hexa was inspired by seeing a dead sunflower at an exhibition.

“In 2014, I went to see a sunflower exhibition, and found myself focused on a dead sunflower near a ground of blooms. The dead flower sat in a place that was always in a shadow,” Tianqi writes.

“I thought, if it could move a little bit, take a 30-feet walk out of the shadow to where the other sunflowers were, it would have lived healthily.”

It's little stompy dance for more water.

Tianqi realised that plants “have the fewest degrees of freedom among all the creatures in nature” – we can pull them, cut them, even burn them, and they’re “eternally, inexplicably passive.”

In the way humans have augmented our ability to move (with bikes, cars, planes, trains and other technology), Tianqi wanted to help out our plant friends.

“With a robotic rover base, plants can experience mobility and interaction,” writes Tianqi. “I do hope that this project can bring some inspiration to the relationship between technology and natural default settings.”

Either way, it's excellent news for black thumbs.

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