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Mushroom learns to crawl after being given robot body (2024)

the-independent.com

51–60 of 76 posts

Re: Mushroom learns to crawl after being given robot body (2024)

#51
post #34

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.

I'm pretty sure that's not true. I think most people learn to walk long before they become aware of being able to walk.

Re: Mushroom learns to crawl after being given robot body (2024)

#52

This 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).

erm acktually not an anime

Re: Mushroom learns to crawl after being given robot body (2024)

#55

Earlier 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…

> Slime molds are classified within the Kingdom Protista, and are more closely related to amoebas and certain seaweeds than to fungi, plants, or animals.

Not a true fungi; today I learned. Thanks!

Re: Mushroom learns to crawl after being given robot body (2024)

#56

I’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.

Off topic but my dad took me around the woods this weekend to show me mushrooms and he almost couldn’t contain his excitement. And this is a person who usually doesn’t like stuff. And the whole time I was like “yep, that’s a mushroom”. There’s clearly something fascinating about the hobby that I don’t get (yet). Curious to hear your take.

Re: Mushroom learns to crawl after being given robot body (2024)

#57
post #26
post #9

Not 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

Good ol' B.F. Skinner. Apparently the idea was pretty solid but he had trouble getting people to take it seriously.

Re: Mushroom learns to crawl after being given robot body (2024)

#59
post #8

Another "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_... )

Has science gone too far, or not far enough? Surely there are business opportunities for reanimating the dead bodies of animals! Where is the mouse jiggler made from an actual dead mouse being controlled by a Raspberry Pi? Or the carcass of a dead dog controlled by an air bladder that will lurch from behind your shrubs and snap at a prowler using zigbee and connected to your security system?

Re: Mushroom learns to crawl after being given robot body (2024)

#60
post #38

Earlier 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?

If you take a small plot of wild land, say 50'x50' and visit it everyday watching all the various mushrooms which will grow there (there will be far more then most people realize or expect) and try and find the sense in where and when they fruit it becomes difficult to write it all off as simple biological responses to environment/following the food/etc, and even if you do look at it that way and start adding up the possible causes and effects you can end up with such a long list that it becomes difficult to not see it as some sort of at least instinctual level intelligence and that the growth of mycelium often has more in common with crawling than mindless growth.

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.

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