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This plant always gets enough sunlight thanks to its robotic legs

Arduino Team — May 8th, 2025

Plants of all kinds are quite infamous for their inability to move, and this can be especially problematic for houseplants that rely on consistently sunny locations within a room in order to get enough light. Driven by wanting their plant to have the best possible growing conditions in their north-facing room, GitHub user MarinaXP has given it legs through a quadruped base that can autonomously navigate.

The robot uses a set of eight servo motors, two for each leg, that work in concert to move along the ground. They are all controlled by an Arduino Mega 2560, which utilizes an ultrasonic distance sensor to check for obstacles and turn to avoid them when necessary. If the path is free of any obstacles, it will initiate a light-seeking routine that measures light levels via a photoresistor at different locations and then picks the one with the highest value before moving towards it.

Thanks to this seeking behavior, Marina’s plant is given the best conditions in which to thrive even when light levels in the room change throughout the day. To read more about this project, you can check out its repository here on GitHub and its post on Reddit.

Boards:Mega
Categories:Arduino