The use of soft tactical sensors (devices that gather information based on the surrounding physical environment) allows the plantoid to navigate its way through its environment. These sensors relay information to the plantoid and produce signals, similar to how a computer can take in information from a keyboard through input. These sensors scan for obstacles or units of interest (i.e. sources of water) by the roots of the robot, and the programming of the plantoid determine if the object of interest is beneficial or not. With this new information, the plantoid sends signals to other moveable parts of the robot to react accordingly, acting similar to how roots relay information to real plants. Since plantoids do not have a central processing unit, the sensors act as individual command centers, feeding directions for nearby root units to interact with. This can result in multiple sensors picking up the same information, and multiple root units moving as a whole.
