Soft Tectonics: Morphologies of Elastic Structure for Coral Reef Environment

Research shows that sea anemones play a crucial role in providing microhabitats for diverse fauna in tropical coastal habitats such as coral reefs. Can artificial organisms mimic sea anemones' behavior to help keep healthy coral reef environments? The most common materials used for artificial coral reefs are bio-cement, steel, limestone, and various types of ceramics, as they provide a stable structure for marine life to thrive and promote the growth of coral. On the other hand, cnidarians exhibit enormous plasticity in their morphologies and life cycles and have emerged as key models in a broad range of research fields, from evolution to ecology. Soft robotics, as an emerging and exciting branch of robotics, has the great potential to explore the biomimicry design of invertebrates. This paper utilizes soft robotics as the fabrication approach to offer a novel design strategy for artificial forms that can behave like sea anemones. We introduce the method of Soft Tectonics by considering material heterogeneities and the hierarchical structure during the digital fabrication process. As the final result, I presented OctoAnemone, a group of DeepOrganisms, that explores future ecology systems through the morphologies of artificial life forms for coral reef environments. OctoAnemone can potentially improve a healthy coral reef habitat by creating artificial structures where smaller fauna can thrive without significant sea anemone populations.