Scientists created a robot with the brain of a mushroom in a new experiment.
Officials at Cornell University in the US and Florence University in Italy both hooked legs onto king oyster mushrooms and created a new hybrid vegetable robot. Those working on the projects think this is a new breakthrough in making robots with living species.
Mushrooms are said to be similar to human brains with the vegetable sharing genes that work like ours. Scientists noticed this and tried to put it into practice.
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Experiments led to the conclusion that mushrooms have electrophysiological activity that robots could translate and turn into movements. Elon Musk once said he planned to try and fuse robot and man together, but this is one of the the first times robots have been made with a living organism.
(Image: Getty Images)
The root structure of fungus, known as mycelium, was grown into the electronics of the robots. The robot was then able to sense and respond to environments, as mushrooms do, and move.
Fungi would prove an obvious choice for robotics, given that they use a neutral network similar to computers. The intelligent vegetable will prove invaluable for the future of robotics.
On top of this, mushrooms are able to move themselves and go wild without control. The scientists put the mushroom on four robotic legs, which appeared to be able to move of their own free will.
Scientist Robert Shepherd, who wrote in Scientific Robotics, added: “Mechanisms, including computing, understanding and action as a response, are done in the biological world and in the artificial world that humans have created, and biology most of the time is better at it than our artificial systems are.”
Anand Mishra, who works as a research associate in the Organic Robotics Lab at Cornell, added: “Living systems respond to touch, they respond to light, they respond to heat, they respond to even some unknowns, like signals.
(Image: Cornell University)
“That’s why we think, OK, if you wanted to build future robots, how can they work in an unexpected environment? We can leverage these living systems, and any unknown input comes in, the robot will respond to that.”
Robots will respond to the electrical spikes produced by the mushroom. Fungi tend to move away from light, which prompted the robot to move.
However, this new era of biohybrid technology poses many problems. Some officials believe robots produced as complete living entities are dangerous and potentially cruel.
Future robots could be unpredictable and adapt their behaviours as they are able to respond to their environments. These traits are human, so scientists ask whether these robots should have rights like we do and laws to protect them.
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