Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let me rephrase: what's the difference between a child telling their parent to walk and the conscious part of your brain telling the unconscious part to walk? (BTW, I agree that the mushroom isn't learning anything. My point is just that a child communicating with their parents is not a good analogy.)
The "conscious part of the brain" gets credit for the walking ability, because it taught "the unconscious part" how to walk, by providing repeated and detailed direction in progressively higher abstractions until full bipedal locomotion was a readily-accessible skill.
Mushroom learns to crawl after being given robot body (2024)
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Re: Mushroom learns to crawl after being given robot body (2024)
#52This combo reminds me of a character in a recent anime called Scavengers Reign. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Scavengers_Reign This limited series blew my mind. Total master piece. In favor of integrating fungus with robotics(i think).
Re: Mushroom learns to crawl after being given robot body (2024)
#53Re: Mushroom learns to crawl after being given robot body (2024)
#54Re: Mushroom learns to crawl after being given robot body (2024)
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Slime molds are super interesting and are able to find optimal paths for resource management. Slime molds have been used to model and improve traffic flow for humans. https://phys.org/news/2022-01-virtual-slime-mold-subway-netw... I would call this action "crawling" and I am sure predates mammals. Or dinosaurs. Or plants.
Slime molds aren’t fungus, though…
Not a true fungi; today I learned. Thanks!
Re: Mushroom learns to crawl after being given robot body (2024)
#56I’m skeptical that the mushroom is in any way “learning to crawl”. It looks more like the mushroom naturally produces signals in response to light, and the robot triggers a walk cycle when it sees that signal.
As a fungophile who spends way too much time crawling around in the woods looking for mushrooms, I think fungus learned to crawl before we did.
Re: Mushroom learns to crawl after being given robot body (2024)
#57Not sure about this particular experiment, but there is certainly interesting potential in integrating biological organisms (or parts thereof) with larger robotic and mechanical systems. Recently I saw a video of a turtle which was given a skateboard. It quickly learned how to zip around the house, chasing the cat, etc. It was a simple demostration of how technology, even as primitive as the wheel, can augment the ab…
Also see Project Pigeon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon
Re: Mushroom learns to crawl after being given robot body (2024)
#58Re: Mushroom learns to crawl after being given robot body (2024)
#59Another "fun" science trick here[0] demo here[1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necrobotics [1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_7LUszWRqco
> Besides the necrobotic spider gripper, there are no other robotic concepts under the necrobotics subfield. Does dead trout swimming upstream not count? doi:10.1017/S0022112005007925 (open access link: https://www.liaolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2006Beal_... )
Re: Mushroom learns to crawl after being given robot body (2024)
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a fungophile who spends way too much time crawling around in the woods looking for mushrooms, I think fungus learned to crawl before we did.
I find that claim interesting, especially given your background in studying fungus. Could you expand on it a bit?
For example, many mushrooms are very good at fruiting just out of sight from trails, walk 20' off the trail, turn around and suddenly you start seeing mushrooms. Instinct is to say that all the mushrooms which grow within sight of the trail get picked by curious people or kicked by children but if you start looking for remains and stumps and mushrumps and those hard to spot just starting to fruit immature buttons, you find surprisingly few. So you think environmental, the trail alters windflow and runoff, animal movement, etc, but than you notice that this is true of even those small trails created by a fox or children which only affect a bit of low growing undergrowth so only has a tiny effect on a very localized area. On and on it goes until you run out of explanations.
I am mostly convinced there is some level of intelligence here and we just can not see it because it is so very different from what we understand as intelligence. But, I may just spend too much time with mushrooms, during the season I always seem to have at least a dozen various mushrooms which I will visit everyday to watch them grow and rot away.