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    Engineers Gave a Mushroom a Robot Body And Let It Run Wild
    Futurology

    Engineers Gave a Mushroom a Robot Body And Let It Run Wild

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    11 Comments

    1. sciencealert on

      Summary (because this is a weird one!):

      An interdisciplinary team of researchers from Cornell University in the US and the University of Florence in Italy took steps to find out, putting 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.

      Through a series of experiments, the researchers showed it was possible to use the mushroom’s electrophysiological activity as a means of translating environmental cues into directives, which could, in turn, be used to drive a mechanical device’s movements.

      Read the peer-reviewed research here: [https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.adk8019](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.adk8019)

    2. squareoctopus on

      Holy schnitzels, lol this is the idea behind a sci-fi story I’ve been meaning to write for some time.

      Make sci-fi FI again!

    3. North_Dinner5388 on

      Was this created because they haven’t been able to take human brains over like they do with insects? So they can attack us in different forms?

    4. IMarvinTPA on

      Do you want Daleks? Because this is how you get Daleks!

      (After rereading this, it starts off in Archer’s voice but morphs into the Daleks’ voice.)

    6. ren_mormorian on

      Great. So now Cordyceps can run and chase us down. And I thought Terminators were a bad idea.

    7. Ecobay25 on

      Don’t worry. They restricted it to a localized space within the lab. They didn’t want it to have too mushroom to roam.

    8. Parker_Friedland on

      Just RND? Or was the mushroom actually fed inputs about their surroundings and trained to respond to them?

    10. feckless_ellipsis on

      Pancake. Spider. Pancake. Spider. Pancake. Spider. Pancake. Spider. Pancake. Spider. Pancake. Spider. Pancake. Spider. Pancake. Spider. Pancake. Spider. Pancake. Spider. Pancake. Spider. Pancake. Spider. Creepycreepycreepycreepycreepy creepycreepycreepycreepy. Pancake.

    11. sdswiki on

      Are mycelium just extremely large neurons? Are the forests populated with giant mushrooms with the intelligence of a fruit fly?

      The bio-mechanical connections that this makes me think about are staggering. The ultimate self-healing robots.