Reservoir Computing with Plants

Plants are ubiquitous on Earth. They are often regarded as organisms that undergo the environmental changes they experience. Instead, we advocate for a more integrated view: a plant as a computing entity. Plants are complex organisms composed of many interconnected nodes and modules. These enable a plant to deal with highly variable environmental conditions due to weather fluctuations, predation and diseases. Despite the absence of a brain-like organ and their inability to move, plants can react effectively to cues from their environment. A plant continually gathers and updates diverse information about its environment and integrates this with its present internal state. From this integrated information, it makes decisions that reconcile its wellbeing with its environment. We propose to consider the plants as a computing unit in the context of physical reservoir computing (PRC).

ISBN:9789463555678

Publication year:2022

Accessibility:Open