Robots Are Gaining New Capabilities Thanks to Plants and Fungi
upstart writes:
Biohybrid technology helps machines sense and heal:
In the TV series Doctor Who, treeborgs supply fresh air to spaceship passengers. Part tree, part robot, these devices convert starlight into oxygen. In Nnedi Okorafor's fantasy novel Zahrah the Windseeker, children receive their own "flora computers" made of leaves and vines, grown from CPU seeds and shaped into useful tech. Although these devices are fictional, flower-powered machines are getting real as a new generation of biohybrid technology blooms.
Engineers have long strived to make lifelike robots. But re-creating the complex functions of, say, a hand or leaf is impossible with synthetic materials, says Anand Mishra, an engineer at Cornell University. "There is a point where technology limits us."
Using life-forms to build machines can overcome some of these limits. Living tissue, for example, has evolved all sorts of ways to scope out the environment - seeing light, feeling warmth, smelling and tasting food. To make robots that are similarly sensitive to their surroundings, Mishra has turned to fungal tissue.
Fungi aren't plants, but Mishra is interested in one of fungi's most plantlike features, mycelia. These rootlike structures tunnel through soil for nutrients and can detect environmental cues such as light, heat and chemicals.
Mishra's team grew mycelia directly into electrodes attached to two robots. The fungi communicated with the robots through electrical signals called action potentials. These zaps are similar to those produced by heart and nerve cells.
Mycelia produce spontaneous action potentials, which triggered the biobots to walk and roll around. When flashed with ultraviolet light, the mycelia produced stronger zaps, which changed the robots' gait and showed that the bots could respond to the environment, Mishra's team reported in 2024 in Science Robotics.
Using fungi in biohybrid robots is still "pretty new," Mishra says. His team now hopes to test how such tech responds to other cues, such as gases. One way their robots' sensory superpowers might help in the real world is in agriculture. Future "shroom" bots could walk through crop fields, testing soil health and other conditions as they go.
While fungi may help robots better interact with the world, plant powers could help devices better survive it. "Many artificial [technologies] have a shelf life," says materials scientist Fabian Meder of the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, Italy. Electronics start to break down in a few years. Yet the oldest trees can stand tall for thousands of years. And while broken electronics require repairs, plants can recover from damage and adapt to new environments.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.