An interdisciplinary team of researchers put a culture of the edible mushroom species Pleurotus eryngii (also known as the king oyster mushroom) in control of a pair of vehicles, which can twitch and roll across a flat surface.

By applying algorithms based on the extracellular electrophysiology of P. eryngii mycelia and feeding the output into a microcontroller unit, the researchers used spikes of activity triggered by a stimulus – in this case, UV light – to toggle mechanical responses in two different kinds of mobile device.

https://youtu.be/5ZkkaM54RH8

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.adk8019

  • Owl [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    15 days ago

    More science should be mad art experiments.

    Also, they should put the robots in an otherwise sterile controlled environment, with more possible substrates scattered about, and periodically re-pot any new mushrooms into new robots and re-sterilize the environment. You know, give the mushrooms some time to evolve into this niche.