{"id":712,"date":"2006-02-14T14:21:00","date_gmt":"2006-02-14T14:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ravenfamily.org\/sam\/?p=712"},"modified":"2006-02-14T14:21:00","modified_gmt":"2006-02-14T14:21:00","slug":"and-for-todays-oh-my-gods-thats-freakin-weird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ravenfamily.org\/sam\/2006\/02\/14\/and-for-todays-oh-my-gods-thats-freakin-weird\/","title":{"rendered":"And for today’s “Oh my gods that’s freakin’ weird…”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"WTF?!\"They’ve got slime mould controlling a robot<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Physarum polycephalum<\/i> is a large single-celled organism that responds to food sources, such as bacteria and fungi, by moving towards and engulfing it. It also moves away from light and favours humid, moist places to inhabit. The mould uses a network of tiny tubes filled with cytoplasm to both sense its environment and decide how to respond to it. Zauner’s team decided to harness this simple control mechanism to direct a small six-legged (hexapod) walking bot.<\/p>\n

They grew slime in a six-pointed star shape on top of a circuit and connected it remotely, via a computer, to the hexapod bot. Any light shone on sensors mounted on top of the robot were used to control light shone onto one of the six points of the circuit-mounted mould \u00e2\u20ac\u201c each corresponding to a leg of the bot.<\/p>\n

As the slime tried to get away from the light its movement was sensed by the circuit and used to control one of the robot’s six legs. The robot then scrabbled away from bright lights as a mechanical embodiment of the mould.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Slime moulds are weird all by themselves. Roger Penrose<\/a> is a fan. Now they’ve attached one to a robot? I can see a bid for world domination any time now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They’ve got slime mould controlling a robot. Physarum polycephalum is a large single-celled organism that responds to food sources, such as bacteria and fungi, by moving towards and engulfing it. It also moves away from light and favours humid, moist places to inhabit. The mould uses a network of tiny tubes filled with cytoplasm to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellany"],"yoast_head":"\nAnd for today's "Oh my gods that's freakin' weird..." ~ Singularity<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ravenfamily.org\/sam\/2006\/02\/14\/and-for-todays-oh-my-gods-thats-freakin-weird\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"And for today's "Oh my gods that's freakin' weird..." ~ Singularity\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"They’ve got slime mould controlling a robot. 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