A wheeled bot rolls across the floor. A soft-bodied robotic star bends its five legs, moving with an awkward shuffle.
Powered by conventional electricity via plug or battery, these simple robotic creations would be unremarkable, but what sets these two robots apart is that they are controlled by a living entity: a king oyster mushroom.
By growing the mushroom’s mycelium, or rootlike threads, into the robot’s hardware, a team led by Cornell University researchers has engineered two types of robots that sense and respond to the environment by harnessing electrical signals made by the fungus and its sensitivity to light.
The robots are the latest accomplishment of scientists in a field known as biohybrid robotics who seek to combine biological, living materials such as plant and animal cells or insects with synthetic components to make partly living and partly engineered entities.
Biohybrid robots have yet to venture beyond the lab, but researchers hope one day robot jellyfish may explore oceans, sperm-powered bots may be able to deliver fertility treatments and cyborg cockroaches could search for survivors in the wake of an earthquake.
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