Video: Robotic Exoskeleton Turns Everyday Houseplants Into Cyborgs

As if we needed more evidence that we have more technology than we know what to do with, a collaboration between an artist and an engineer has yielded something both whimsical and potentially useful. It gives houseplants autonomy.

Such ideas have been explored in science fiction before—in Vernor Vinge’s novel A Fire Upon the Deep, one race of aliens consists of trees attached to a wheeled base that affords them short-term memory and consciousness. [...]