Author
Listed:
- Danli Luo
(Carnegie Mellon University)
- Aditi Maheshwari
(Accenture Labs)
- Andreea Danielescu
(Accenture Labs)
- Jiaji Li
(Zhejiang University)
- Yue Yang
(Zhejiang University)
- Ye Tao
(Zhejiang University City College)
- Lingyun Sun
(Zhejiang University)
- Dinesh K. Patel
(Carnegie Mellon University)
- Guanyun Wang
(Carnegie Mellon University
Zhejiang University)
- Shu Yang
(University of Pennsylvania)
- Teng Zhang
(Syracuse University
Syracuse University)
- Lining Yao
(Carnegie Mellon University)
Abstract
Aerial seeding can quickly cover large and physically inaccessible areas1 to improve soil quality and scavenge residual nitrogen in agriculture2, and for postfire reforestation3–5 and wildland restoration6,7. However, it suffers from low germination rates, due to the direct exposure of unburied seeds to harsh sunlight, wind and granivorous birds, as well as undesirable air humidity and temperature1,8,9. Here, inspired by Erodium seeds10–14, we design and fabricate self-drilling seed carriers, turning wood veneer into highly stiff (about 4.9 GPa when dry, and about 1.3 GPa when wet) and hygromorphic bending or coiling actuators with an extremely large bending curvature (1,854 m−1), 45 times larger than the values in the literature15–18. Our three-tailed carrier has an 80% drilling success rate on flat land after two triggering cycles, due to the beneficial resting angle (25°–30°) of its tail anchoring, whereas the natural Erodium seed’s success rate is 0%. Our carriers can carry payloads of various sizes and contents including biofertilizers and plant seeds as large as those of whitebark pine, which are about 11 mm in length and about 72 mg. We compare data from experiments and numerical simulation to elucidate the curvature transformation and actuation mechanisms to guide the design and optimization of the seed carriers. Our system will improve the effectiveness of aerial seeding to relieve agricultural and environmental stresses, and has potential applications in energy harvesting, soft robotics and sustainable buildings.
Suggested Citation
Danli Luo & Aditi Maheshwari & Andreea Danielescu & Jiaji Li & Yue Yang & Ye Tao & Lingyun Sun & Dinesh K. Patel & Guanyun Wang & Shu Yang & Teng Zhang & Lining Yao, 2023.
"Autonomous self-burying seed carriers for aerial seeding,"
Nature, Nature, vol. 614(7948), pages 463-470, February.
Handle:
RePEc:nat:nature:v:614:y:2023:i:7948:d:10.1038_s41586-022-05656-3
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05656-3
Download full text from publisher
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.
Citations
Citations are extracted by the
CitEc Project, subscribe to its
RSS feed for this item.
Cited by:
- Patire, Anthony D. PhD & Dion, Francois PhD & Bayen, Alexandre M. PhD, 2024.
"Reduce Emissions and Improve Traffic Flow Through Collaborative Autonomy,"
Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings
qt726964qq, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley.
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:614:y:2023:i:7948:d:10.1038_s41586-022-05656-3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.