Gaia: A Social Robot to Help Connect Humans and Plants

Abstract

Interacting with plants has been shown to increase both physical and mental health outcomes and seemed obvious for many during such troubling times. Inevitably, plants died as a result of the owner’s lack of awareness of their needs. Gaia, a social robot-planter, was created to communicate a plant’s needs to its owner in an easy and enjoyable way. The final prototype, a multimodal interface, was designed to join natural language messaging with an emotive digital face and “voice.” Creating a social robot that anthropomorphizes the user’s plant to effectively communicate the plants’ needs, build empathy, and create a stronger emotional bond between the plant and owner, leading to better outcomes for both.