ChatBot is Good News for People with Not-So-Green Thumbs

Starting and maintaining a new garden can be daunting. But a new multi-agent conversational system developed at Georgia Tech is taking much of the guesswork out of gardening for beginners.

CultivAgents is a three-agent system that fields gardening questions and creates tailored plans based on a user’s gardening skill level, climate and environment, and cultural background.

The experience agent, environmental agent, and ethnobotanical agent inform one another and work together to guide users through the gardening process.

“Multi-agent systems provide multi-faceted support,” said Diana Wang, a Ph.D. student in Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing who created CultivAgents. “My interest was in how we could provide more personalized and aligned support to individuals trying to grow food themselves while facing unique environmental or cultural factors.”

Gardening is a hobby that many people start but give up because of the time and effort it requires to be successful. Ryan Pemberton, a horticulturist at Georgia Tech’s community garden, said the two biggest mistakes he sees novice gardeners make are starting too big and overwatering.