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Engineers Gave a Mushroom a Robot Body And Let It Run Wild (www.sciencealert.com)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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An interdisciplinary team of researchers put 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.

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.

https://youtu.be/5ZkkaM54RH8

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.adk8019

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 months ago (2 children)

my rule not to eat anything smarter than i am is steering me worryingly close to mushroomless waters

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They're fruits. If you're not eating the colony itself, I think it's okay.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

They're fruits

oh god it's cannibalism then; sin compounded upon sin

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Sunflowers move towards the sun on their own, this isn't much different from that.