Generating Diversity: Art, robots, and the future of farming

The dominant systems of agriculture that provide food for much of the world suffer from a lack of crop diversity, which leaves them vulnerable to the spread of disease and pests. This paper proposes that this is, in part due to the machinery used in industrial agriculture. It introduces a project, Evolving Species One, that is grounded in artistic practice and robotics research that draws inspiration from gallery-based robotic artwork to try to design and evolve robots that can cultivate diversity in the plants that are growing within a complex farm ecosystem.