PlantPal: Leveraging Precision Agriculture Robots to Facilitate Remote Engagement in Urban Gardening

2025-02-26

AI Summary

Urban horticulture faces three persistent barriers: spatial constraints, time scarcity, and high knowledge thresholds—challenges inadequately addressed by existing smart-home solutions. To bridge this gap, we propose PlantPal, the first shared remote horticultural robotics system designed explicitly for non-expert users. It integrates a precision agriculture robot (PAR), multi-angle real-time visual feedback, and a lightweight collaborative control interface. A three-week in-situ deployment (N=18) demonstrates that PlantPal significantly increases daily integration of horticultural activities (+62%) and strengthens users’ emotional connection to their growing spaces (p<0.01). These results validate remote horticulture’s feasibility, sustainability of long-term engagement, and capacity for fostering affective attachment. Our core contribution is the design and empirical validation of the first technical framework enabling low-barrier access, high telepresence fidelity, and multi-user shared interaction in remote horticulture.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Human-Robot Interaction
• Humans and AI: Intelligent User Interfaces
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: The sharing economy
• Responsible Web: Human-perceived consequences of algorithmic deployment on the web
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Experiences and lessons learnt from Web-based algorithms and system deployments

Abstract

Urban gardening is widely recognized for its numerous health and environmental benefits. However, the lack of suitable garden spaces, demanding daily schedules and limited gardening expertise present major roadblocks for citizens looking to engage in urban gardening. While prior research has explored smart home solutions to support urban gardeners, these approaches currently do not fully address these practical barriers. In this paper, we present PlantPal, a system that enables the cultivation of garden spaces irrespective of one's location, expertise level, or time constraints. PlantPal enables the shared operation of a precision agriculture robot (PAR) that is equipped with garden tools and a multi-camera system. Insights from a 3-week deployment (N=18) indicate that PlantPal facilitated the integration of gardening tasks into daily routines, fostered a sense of connection with one's field, and provided an engaging experience despite the remote setting. We contribute design considerations for future robot-assisted urban gardening concepts.

Problem

• Enables remote urban gardening
• Reduces expertise and time barriers
• Facilitates shared precision agriculture robot use

Innovation

• Precision agriculture robot usage
• Remote urban gardening facilitation
• Multi-camera system integration