Autonomous Self-Burying Seed Carriers for Aerial Seeding
Aerial seeding can quickly cover large and physically inaccessible areas to improve soil quality and scavenge residual nitrogen in agriculture, and for post fire reforestation and wildland restoration. However, it suffers from low germination rates, due to the direct exposure of unburied seeds to harsh sunlight, wind and granivorous birds, as well as undesirable air humidity and temperature.
Here, inspired by Erodium seeds we design and fabricate self-drilling seed carriers, turning wood veneer into highly stiff (about 4.9 GPa when dry, and about 1.3 GPa when wet) and hygromorphic bending or coiling actuators with an extremely large bending curvature (1,854 m−1), 45 times larger than the values in the literature
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