54
Spore Drive incoming? (www.independent.co.uk)
submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/17039986

Engineers gave a mushroom a robot body and let it run wild

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.

top 9 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago

Knowing humanity, we'll hit Last of Us zombies long before the spore drive.

[-] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago

And they’ll be coming for us on their insanely fast robot spider legs that we built for them for some fucking reason

[-] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

There is something about the idea of fungus given that sort of agency that I find incredibly disturbing.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago
[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Yeah, but that’s not really the same thing. That’s more following basic programming: get the ant to the top of the leaf. This feels different to me.

Not that cordyceps isn’t also creepy…

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

The idea that it mind controls the ant into its death is creepy as fuck to me. It’s this kind of thing that, if it ever made the jump to infecting humans, would probably wipe out the species.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Sure, but now imagine it can run toward you in order to infect you.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

I wonder how much these results would also apply to making random connections between sensors or actuator signals and our brains. Like if we hooked up a microphone, to the brain, would we hear through it similarly to how we hear through our ears? If the microphone was stationarity, would our awareness expand to always include audio awareness of the location the mic is in, or would it just confuse audio processing from our ears? Would it go through the same audio processing "circuitry" as our ears, or would the brain develop a new channel?

And then the same question but this time a camera instead of a mic. And maybe that camera can see a wider spectrum than our eyes can, if we could see through that camera, would we see new colours or would our existing colours just get remapped?

this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2024
54 points (100.0% liked)

TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name

3516 readers
742 users here now

/c/TenFoward: Your home-away-from-home for all things Star Trek!

Re-route power to the shields, emit a tachyon pulse through the deflector, and post all the nonsense you want. Within reason of course.

~ 1. No bigotry. This is a Star Trek community. Hating someone off of their race, culture, creed, sexuality, or identity is not remotely acceptable. Mistakes can happen but do your best to respect others.

~ 2. Keep it civil. Disagreements will happen both on lore and preferences. That's okay! Just don't let it make you forget that the person you are talking to is also a person.

~ 3. Use spoiler tags. This applies to any episodes that have dropped within 3 months prior of your posting. After that it's free game.

~ 4. Keep it Trek related. This one is kind of a gimme but keep as on topic as possible.

~ 5. Keep posts to a limit. We all love Star Trek stuff but 3-4 posts in an hour is plenty enough.

~ 6. Try to not repost. Mistakes happen, we get it! But try to not repost anything from within the past 1-2 months.

~ 7. No General AI Art. Posts of simple AI art do not 'inspire jamaharon' and fuck over our artist friends.

Fun will now commence.


Sister Communities:

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

Want your community to be added to the sidebar? Just ask one of our mods!


Honorary Badbitch:

@[email protected] for realizing that the line used to be "want to be added to the sidebar?" and capitalized on it. Congratulations and welcome to the sidebar. Stamets is both ashamed and proud.


Creator Resources:

Looking for a Star Trek screencap? (TrekCore)

Looking for the right Star Trek typeface/font for your meme? (Thank you @kellyaster for putting this together!)


founded 8 months ago
MODERATORS