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> Engineers develop robotic wooden seed carriers that mimic self-burying seeds, enabling aerial seeding of hard-to-reach areas (More, w/video)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykKyp8RbcEM

 2,639 views Premiered Feb 15, 2023

Nature. Issue Feb 16, 2023. Cover story.

Link to the paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s4158…

Project page: https://www.morphingmatter.cs.cmu.edu…

Read the paper for free online: https://rdcu.be/c5HBn

Description:

Agriculture and reforestation: Bioinspired seed carrier improves on nature.

Aerial seeding is a crucial way to cover large and otherwise inaccessible areas, and can facilitate post-fire reforestation or wildland restoration. However, when a seed lies on the surface, it can be damaged by weather conditions or eaten by wildlife, resulting in low germination rates. Seeds of various grass species can self-bury, an ability that would be advantageous if applied to different seed types.

A new biodegradable seed carrier design inspired by the self-drilling behaviour of Erodium seeds is described in a paper in Nature. The seed carrier has a higher implantation success rate than that of Erodium seeds. This technology may improve the effectiveness of aerial seeding to address agricultural and environmental stresses in degraded regions.

Authors: Danli Luo, Aditi Maheshwari, Andreea Danielescu, Jiaqi Li, Yue Yang, Ye Tao, Lingyun Sun, Dinesh K. Patel, Guanyun Wang*, Shu Yang*, Teng Zhang*, Lining Yao*. 

Collaborative Institutes: 

• Morphing Matter Lab, Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University 
• Syracuse University
• University of Pennsylvania
• Accenture Labs
• Zhejiang University

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Wow, what feat of engineering.  Very impressive.  A six minute video is worth watching.  

How little we know and how little we exploit what is from of our eye.

Trees on Mars is a little farfetched, but for reforestation it seems unbelievable.

I see the list of Gooferment grants funding this and unlike most of the ridiculed one (like why do fish mate), this one seems like a real winner.

Guess that excuses at least 100 boondoggles.

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