While our Glorious Leader is freaked out over human-animal clone hybrids, I’m much twitchier about animal-machine conjugations — ever since I saw a roadkill rabbit mechanically reanimated into a creepy SRL robo-contraption [shudder]. But with robo-rats, fish-controlled robots, and robo-roaches skittering about labs and workshops worldwide, monstrous hybrids are already here.
The latest Frakenbot is based on a pretty nifty idea. It’s a robot that hijacks a slime mold’s (Physarum polycephalum) natural light-avoiding behavior, taking the robot along for the ride when it seeks out a moist, dark place to slither into. At the moment, this is done remotely — the mold is grown separately, on top of a sensor circuit that can sense as the mold moves away from light, The computer connected to the mold-sensor then wirelessly sends that movement information to a six-legged robot. This may seem to some like a rather elaborate way of creating a simple light-avoiding robot, but the longterm goal here is to understand how to make use of an organism’s natural behavioral routines to power and control future nano-scaled robots.
[BTW: “Moldies” in the title refers to the life-forms in Rudy Rucker’s novel Freeware, beings made out of a smart plastic and gene-tweaked molds and algaes that can make themselves into any shape/device desired.]
[Via Boing Boing]