‘Autonomous Tree Planting Robot’ was exhibited at JUPITER Hamburg as part of ‘City Climate meets Creative Coding Festival’.

The project explores alternative approaches to city planning with a speculative proposal for an Autonomous Tree Planting Robot – asking what if city planning was automated according to climate data.

We set up the headquarters of the fictional City Robot Lab in the exhibition space, populated with technical drawings, models, news reports, sketches, and prototypes of the robot which may or may not have been released in Hamburg.

Also on display in the exhibition space was a speculative simulation of Hamburg – which draws on climate data and scientific input from GERICS (Climate Service Center Germany), to hack the code of Connected Urban Twin, an agent-based simulation tool of the City Science Lab. Using data of urban heat islands in Hamburg, the simulation projects into the future and shows a gradually appearing urban forest, resulting from the robots’ activity. The simulation highlights a number of potentially relevant places within the city where trees should be planted. We plan on inviting city planners of Hamburg to consider planting physical trees in these locations.

The project is an outcome of a year long research project initiated by the City Science Lab at HafenCity University Hamburg, to foster collaboration between artists and scientists in the context of climate change, data, and city planning. Our proposal was awarded additional funding from the German Federal Cultural Foundation, and received support from the Climate Service Center Germany (GERICS).

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/37458