Biofeedback-Based Closed-Loop Phytoactuation in Vertical Farming and Controlled-Environment Agriculture.

This work focuses on biohybrid systems-plants with biosensors and actuating mechanisms that enhance the ability of biological organisms to control environmental parameters, to optimize growth conditions or to cope with stress factors. Biofeedback-based phytoactuation represents the next step of development in hydroponics, vertical farming and controlled-environment agriculture. The sensing part of the discussed approach uses (electro)physiological sensors.

Stimulus classification with electrical potential and impedance of living plants: comparing discriminant analysis and deep-learning methods.

The physiology of living organisms, such as living plants, is complex and particularly difficult to understand on a macroscopic, organism-holistic level. Among the many options for studying plant physiology, electrical potential and tissue impedance are arguably simple measurement techniques that can be used to gather plant-level information. Despite the many possible uses, our research is exclusively driven by the idea of phytosensing, that is, interpreting living plants' signals to gather information about surrounding environmental conditions.

Electric-field-coupled oscillators for collective electrochemical perception in biohybrid robotics.

This work explores the application of nonlinear oscillators coupled by an electric field in water, inspired by weakly electric fish. Such coupled oscillators operate in clear and colloidal (mud, bottom silt) water and represent a collective electrochemical sensor that is sensitive to global environmental parameters, the geometry of the common electric field and spatial dynamics of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). Implemented in hardware and software, this approach can be used to create global awareness in a group of robots, which possess limited sensing and communication capabilities.

The biosensor based on electrochemical dynamics of fermentation in yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

The zymase activity of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is sensitive to environmental parameters and is therefore used as a microbiological sensor for water quality assessment, ecotoxicological characterization or environmental monitoring. Comparing to bacterial bioluminescence approach, this method has no toxicity, excludes usage of genetically modified microorganisms, and enables low-cost express analysis. This work focuses on measuring the yeast fermentation dynamics based on multichannel pressure sensing and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS).