An Incredible Biohybrid Tethered Starfish Shaped Soft Robot Powered by Embedded Mushrooms

Researchers from Cornell University and the University of Florence built an incredible biohybrid tethered starfish-shaped soft robot that is powered by embeddedPleurotus eryngii(king oyster mushrooms). The fungi were allowed to grow within the electronics that built the robot and their conductivity was proven during a live demonstration. This is one of two robots from the study.

In creating a pair of new robots, Cornell researchers cultivated an unlikely component, one found not in the lab but on the forest floor: fungal mycelia. By harnessing mycelia's innate electrical signals, the researchers discovered a new way of controlling biohybrid" robots that can potentially react to their environment better than their purely synthetic counterparts.