Amoeboid Robot Moves Autonomously Without Centralized Brain 38
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from MIT's Technology Review:
"A new blob-like robot described in the journal Advanced Robotics uses springs, feet, 'protoplasm' and a distributed nervous system to move in a manner inspired by the slime mold Physarum polycepharum. ... Researcher Takuya Umedachi of Hiroshima University has been perfecting his blob-bot for years, starting with early prototypes that used springs but lacked an air-filled bladder. ... Umedachi modeled his latest version on the 'true' slime mold, which has been shown to achieve a 'human-like' decision-making capacity through properties emerging from the interactions of its individual spores (abstract). Slime molds appear to have general computational abilities, and you've probably heard that they can solve mazes."
they can solve mazes (Score:5, Interesting)
... by enumeration.
Nature 2000 paper [nature.com] Figrue 1 legend:
Four hours after the setting of the agar blocks (AG), the dead ends of the plasmodium shrink and the pseudopodia explore all possible connections.
Figure 1a shows "Structure of the organism before finding the shortest path"
Text: "The plasmodium pseudopodia reaching dead ends in the labyrinth shrank " (engrish)
SO, in short, organism first fills the whole thing, then retracts from the areas with no food. Same way water will solve the problem (first part).
What they demonstrated is that signal from one end of organism about presence of food reached the other end of the organism. It's more about memory than computation.
Who Knew Slime Molds Were That Smart? (Score:4, Interesting)