This installation enables a live plant to control a machete. It has a control system that reads and utilizes the electrical noises found in a live philodendron. The system uses an open source micro-controller connected to the plant to read varying resistance signals across the plant's leaves. Using custom software, these signals are mapped in real-time to the movements of the joints of the industrial robot holding a machete. In this way, the movements of the machete are determined based on input from the plant. Essentially the plant is the brain of the robot controlling the machete determining how it swings, jabs, slices and interacts in space.

Over the last 12 to 18 months, almost every chief executive at the helm of a major oil company has outlined an ambition to lower corporate break-even down to the $30-40 per barrel range, a sentiment that's unlikely to alter despite the recent relative strengthening of futures prices. And with'Big Oil' targeting throughput maximization via digitally underpinned performance enhancing levers, the landscape is getting more competitive than ever for vendors helping them reach that process optimization Alamo. Among the vendors toughing it out sensing incremental opportunities in the sector's new found preference for data analytics, cloud computing, automation, Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) is Honeywell Process Solutions (HPS), the multinational company's automation and control solutions division. Vimal Kapur, President of Honeywell Process Solutions, says his company is busy demonstrating the value of cross-spectrum digitization and big data to oil and gas majors. Vimal Kapur, President of HPS, says the message from the oil and gas industry is clear – good times or bad, they want their margins to remain on positive turf with the aid of new technologies.