{"id":8802,"date":"2006-02-17T15:35:14","date_gmt":"2006-02-17T15:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/streettech.dreamhosters.com\/?p=8802"},"modified":"2006-02-17T15:35:14","modified_gmt":"2006-02-17T15:35:14","slug":"moldies-here-we-come","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/streettech.com\/?p=8802","title":{"rendered":"Moldies Here We Come?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a> [shudder]. But with robo-rats, fish-controlled robots<\/a>, and robo-roaches skittering about labs and workshops worldwide, monstrous hybrids are already here.<\/p>\n

The latest Frakenbot<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

[BTW: “Moldies” in the title refers to the life-forms in Rudy Rucker’s novel Freeware<\/a>, beings made out of a smart plastic and gene-tweaked molds and algaes that can make themselves into any shape\/device desired.]<\/p>\n

[Via Boing Boing<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Moldies Here We Come?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-robots"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/streettech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/streettech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/streettech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streettech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streettech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/streettech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8802\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/streettech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streettech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streettech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}