In my Gamboa 2012 field session, Peter and I were discussing means of calibrating his initial assays, and also creating new ways of interacting with the plant ants that we were unable to do a simple humans, kicking and poking the trees.

As an early very exploratory project, I built a simple, arduino-controlled robotic woodpecker. After initial tests and playing around with it, I showed peter how to manipulate the device and change its behavior, and he built it into a newer version for his official experimentation.

Peter Marting’s poster from his 2012 Field Season