Tag: robots

Nobody knows what sleeping mushrooms dream of when their vast mycelial networks flicker and pulse with electrochemical responses akin to those of our own brain cells.

But given a chance, what might this web of impulses do if granted a moment of freedom?

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.

“By growing mycelium into the electronics of a robot, we were able to allow the biohybrid machine to sense and respond to the environment,” says senior researcher Rob Shepherd, a materials scientist at Cornell.

Melding meat with machine is nothing new. Evolution has had hundreds of millions of years to fine-tune organic machines, so it’s only natural we’d turn to biology for short-cuts on making robust devices that can sense, think, and move how we want.

Surprisingly, the Fungi kingdom is something of an untapped goldmine for cybernetic technology. Easily cultured with relatively simple requirements and a propensity to survive where many other organisms would struggle, molds and mushrooms could provide engineers with a variety of robust living components to suit just about every sensory or even computational need.

Often hidden from view, networks of fine fungal threads respond to changes in their surroundings as they weave through the soil in search of resources. A number of species even crackle with transmembrane activity that resembles our own neural responses, providing researchers with a potential means of eavesdropping on their secret conversations.

By applying algorithms based on the extracellular electrophysiology of P. eryngii mycelia and feeding the output into a microcontroller unit, the researchers used spikes of activity triggered by a stimulus – in this case, UV light – to toggle mechanical responses in two different kinds of mobile device.

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Picture this: hundreds of ant-sized robots climb over rubble, under rocks and between debris to inspect the damage of a fallen building before human rescuers explore on-site.

Downscaling legged robots to the size of an insect enables access to small spaces that humans and large robots cannot reach. A swarm of small robots can even collaborate like their insect counterparts to haul objects and protect one another. Picotaur, a new robot from the labs of Sarah Bergbreiter and Aaron Johnson is the first of its size, able to run, turn, push loads and climb miniature stairs.

“This robot has legs that are driven by multiple actuators so it can achieve various locomotion capabilities,” said Sukjun Kim, a recent Ph.D. graduate advised by Bergbreiter. “With multiple gait patterns, it can walk like other hexapod robots, similar to how a cockroach moves, but it can also hop from the ground to overcome obstacles.”

The 7.9 mm robot was 3D-printed using two-photon polymerization, a process previously successful in building various small-scale robotic systems in the lab such as microbots, microgrippers, microswimmers, and microsensors. The work is published in the journal Advanced Intelligent Systems.

“Using this process, we were able to miniaturize the two degree of freedom linkage mechanism that allows Picotaur to clear step heights and easily alternate between walking and jumping,” said Bergbreiter, Professor of Mechanical Engineering.

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Among the many things that humans cannot do (without some fairly substantial modification) is shifting our body morphology around on demand. It sounds a little extreme to be talking about things like self-amputation, and it is a little extreme, but it’s also not at all uncommon for other animals to do—lizards can disconnect their tails to escape a predator, for example. And it works in the other direction, too, with animals like ants adding to their morphology by connecting to each other to traverse gaps that a single ant couldn’t cross alone.

In a new paper, roboticists from The Faboratory at Yale University have given a soft robot the ability to detach and reattach pieces of itself, editing its body morphology when necessary. It’s a little freaky to watch, but it kind of makes me wish I could do the same thing.

These are fairly standard soft-bodied silicon robots that use asymmetrically stiff air chambers that inflate and deflate (using a tethered pump and valves) to generate a walking or crawling motion. What’s new here are the joints, which rely on a new material called a bicontinuous thermoplastic foam (BTF) to form a supportive structure for a sticky polymer that’s solid at room temperature but can be easily melted.

The BTF acts like a sponge to prevent the polymer from running out all over the place when it melts, and means that you can pull two BTF surfaces apart by melting the joint, and stick them together again by reversing the procedure. The process takes about 10 minutes and the resulting joint is quite strong. It’s also good for a couple hundred dettach/reattach cycles before degrading. It even stands up to dirt and water reasonably well.

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