A team of researchers at Cornell University has grown mycelium into robotic equipment and constructed two types of robots that sense and respond to their environment using the mushroom’s electrical signals and its sensitivity to light.
These robots are the latest development of scientists working in the field of biohybrid robotics, a field of science that aims to combine biological, living materials – such as plant and animal cells or insects – with synthetic components to create part-living, part-engineered entities.
Biohybrid robots have yet to make it outside the lab, but scientists hope one day robot jellyfish will be able to explore the oceanssperm-controlled robots will be able to provide infertility treatment services, and cyborg cockroaches will be able to search for earthquake survivors.
“Mechanization, including computation, understanding, and action in response, occurs both in the biological world and in the artificial world created by humans—and biology tends to do it better than our artificial systems,” says of a study published in the journal Science Roboticswhich details the aforementioned bots, by senior author Robert Shepherd.
“Biohybridization is about trying to find components in the biological world that we can use, understand and manipulate to make artificial systems work better,” adds the Cornell University professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, who directs Cornell’s Organic Robotics Laboratory.
Half mushroom, half machine
Team royal crooks (Pleurotus eryngii) started growing in the lab from a simple kit ordered online. The researchers chose this type of mushroom because it grows easily and quickly.
They grew the mycelium, which creates networks that the study says can sense, communicate and transport nutrients – working a bit like neurons in the brain. (Therefore, calling these constructs created by scientists mushroom robots is not entirely accurate. We call a fruiting body a mushroom – and these robots are fed by mycelium).
The mycelium emits weak electrical signals and can be connected to electrodes.
Andrew Adamatzky, professor of unconventional computing at the University of the West of England in Bristol, who is developing mushroom computers, says it is not clear how mushrooms generate electrical signals. “No one knows for sure,” he says. He was not involved in this study himself, but he reviewed it before publication.
“You have to make sure the electrode is in the right place – because the mycelium is very thin. It doesn’t have a lot of biomass,” explains the study’s lead author, Anand Mishra, a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell’s Organic Robotics Laboratory. “Then you grow it, and when the mycelium starts to grow, it wraps around the electrode.”
Mishra has developed an electrical interface that accurately reads the raw electrical activity of the mycelium, then processes it and converts it into digital information that can activate the robot’s actuators or moving parts.
By responding to the electrical spikes generated by the mycelium, the robots can walk and turn—and when Mishra and his colleagues began stimulating the robots with ultraviolet light, they changed trajectories, showing that they could respond to their environment.
“Fungi don’t really like light,” Shepherd explains. – Depending on the difference in (light) intensity, different functions of the robot can be initiated. It will move faster or move away from the light.”
Interesting study
Happily, more work is being done in the field of biohybrid robotics that goes beyond human, animal and insect tissues, says Victoria Webster-Wood, an assistant professor in the Biohybrid and Organic Robotics Group at Carnegie Mellon University (USA). “Mushrooms may be superior to other biohybrid methods because of the conditions needed to support their life.” She did not participate in this study.
“If they are more resistant to environmental conditions, they could be excellent candidates for biohybrid robots for use in agriculture and marine monitoring or research,” says the scientist. The study noted that mushrooms can be grown in large quantities and thrive in a variety of environments.
The researchers controlled the rolling robot without wires connecting it to external electrical infrastructure, an achievement Webster-Wood called particularly noteworthy. “Truly autonomous biohybrid robots are a challenge in this field,” she says, “and the fact that they’ve done it with a mycelial system is pretty exciting.”
Biohybrid robots in the real world
According to Mr. Shepherd, mushroom-driven technologies can be applied in agriculture. “In this case, we used light as the input source, but in the future it can also be chemicals. “In the future, robots could sense the soil chemistry in crops and decide when to add more fertilizer — perhaps mitigating further agricultural impacts — such as harmful algal blooms,” the scientist told the Cornell Chronicle.
According to A. Adamatzky, mushroom-controlled robots and mushroom computing in general have enormous potential. The scientist says his lab has developed more than 30 sensing and computing devices using living fungi – including growing self-renewing skin for robots that can respond to light and touch.
“With the right gear (transmission system), the robot can, for example, monitor the health of ecological systems. The mushroom controller would respond to changes – such as air pollution – and direct the robot accordingly, says A. Adamatzky. “The emergence of yet another mushroom device – a robot controller – interestingly demonstrates the extraordinary capabilities of mushrooms.”
Rafael Mestre, a lecturer at the School of Electronics and Informatics at the University of Southampton in the UK, who works on the social, ethical and political implications of emerging technologies, says that if biohybrid robots become more complex and deployed in the ocean or other ecosystems, they could disrupt the habitat, questioning the traditional separation between life and machine. .
“You’re putting these things into the ecosystem chain where they shouldn’t be,” says Mestre, who was not involved in the new study. – If you spend a large amount, it may cause disturbances. I don’t think there’s any big ethical issues with this particular study at this point … but if it’s going to continue to be developed, I think it’s pretty important to consider what happens when we let it out into the open.”
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2024-09-09 09:12:54