The news feeds on the internet lit up in late summer with mushroom news.
Biohybrid robots “that are part fungi and part computer convert fungal electrical signals into digital commands, a promising advance in building more sustainable robots.” It was like a sci-fi scenario gone into overdrive - mushrooms moving about with a robotic exoskeleton.
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.
The team’s paper, “Sensorimotor Control of Robots Mediated by Electrophysiological Measurements of Fungal Mycelia,” published Aug. 28 in Science Robotics.
