You are familiar with biomimicry, which consists of imitating certain concepts of life to apply them to our society. Discover biohybrid robotics now. A very recent scientific field which consists of integrating cells and/or living organisms into the field of robotics. The recent study carried out by researchers at Cornell University in the United States and published in the journal Science Robotics August 28, 2024 reports the use of mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, in the design of robots.
Article originally published in August 2024
How to use mushrooms to control robots?
It is true that the question can legitimately be asked. But what interests Cornell University researchers is not really the mushrooms themselves, but more how they communicate with each other.
And representatives of the fungal world achieve this thanks to mycelium. It is “all the more or less branched filaments forming the vegetative part of a mushroom.” according to the National Center for Textual and Lexical Resources. White in color, it is not often visible on the surface and therefore constitutes a means of communication, by electrical impulses, for the fungi attached to it.
Cornell scientists therefore had the idea of growing mushrooms in a 3D printed structure equipped with numerous electrodes. But the electrical impulses transmitted by the mycelium do not occur all the time. No, mushrooms communicate especially when they are subject to changes in their environment which would therefore make them want to find another place to settle.
That's it, the researchers just had to find a way for the mushrooms to start communicating and converting electrical signals on a computer connected to a robot to make it move. But how do you get a mushroom to communicate?
“ They don't like the light ”
Unlike flowers and many animals, mushrooms do not need sunlight to flourish, quite the contrary. If you have ever taken a trip to the forest, you have surely noticed that the mushrooms that grow there are often located at the foot of the trees, right in the middle of the forest.
And the reason for this is quite simple. “Mushrooms do not like light, they grow in dark places.” explained Robert Shepherd, co-author of the study and an engineer at Cornell University, in National Geographic.
In fact, a significant change in brightness or too much exposure to the Sun's UV rays could constitute a change in environment mentioned above and could therefore push the mushrooms to communicate and therefore send electrical impulses.
In fact, the technique for sending strong signals was ready. It would therefore be enough to expose the mushrooms to a large quantity of ultraviolet rays for them to begin to communicate their desire to find a new, darker location.
“Since they really don't like it [ndr, la lumière], this made it possible to obtain a strong signal' explained Robert Shepherd to National Geographic. And the greater the exposure, the stronger the electrical signal and therefore the faster the robot, which is controlled by the computer receiving the impulses from the mushrooms, will move.
Video of the robot designed by researchers at Cornell University. It is controlled by electrical impulses transmitted by the mycelium. The video is accelerated.
But light is not the only stimulus that fungi can respond to. Very small changes (radiation, poisons, etc.) in their environment will be captured and interpreted as a potential threat to them.
An ecological alternative with varied applications
As a commentator on the recent discovery, Vickie Webster-Wood, an engineer at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania, USA) was delighted with such a technological advance. Particularly with regard to the ecological impact of future robots controlled by mushrooms, compared to “traditional” robots.
“If you build a swarm of robots to monitor a coral reef, and you use electronics that contain heavy metals and plastics, and you're not able to collect them all, that's a lot of waste that has been introduced into the environment.” she confided to National Geographic.
The fact that these mushrooms can grow almost anywhere, with disconcerting ease, also opens the door to the use of this type of robot in the space sector. Indeed, according to Vickie Webster-Wood, it would be enough “to send a very small quantity of mycelium to a distant destination, grow mushrooms there and build the robots directly on site.”Perhaps this innovation will be used in the colonization of the Moon or, in a more distant future, that of Mars.
According to information collected by National Geographicbesides the space domain, robots controlled by mushrooms could also be used in various fields. In agriculture to detect possible soil contamination, but also in the case of exploring highly radioactive areas to carry out in-depth analyses…
Source : National Geographic
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