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

the-independent.com

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

#61

Post by ofalkaed »

lopatin wrote: post #56
ofalkaed wrote: post #15

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.

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.

Your dad sounds like a good sort. I have no idea how to explain the mushroom fascination that some of us have to those that lack it and have mostly learned to just not talk about mushrooms with people who don't have the fascination.

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

#62

Post by luqtas »

ofalkaed wrote: post #60
pyman wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

great read: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187861462...

fungi has memory and can decide to not grow on a previous hostile enviroment/direction

edit: i'm skeptical about the fantastic type of journalism title. the paper points on using fungi electrical reactions to light to drive a robot, not the the otherwise, even less the fungi understanding a "robot" and using it. despite them showing spatial perception on studies about their capabilities

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

#64

Post by taneq »

mhuffman wrote: post #59
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

The Mechanicum will follow your career with much interest. ;)

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

#65

Post by pyman »

ofalkaed wrote: post #60
pyman wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Looks like they respond to their environment in complex ways. What if mushrooms avoid trails because they feel the vibrations? Maybe they learned that foot traffic = danger. So it grows out of reach.

You should explore this theory and run some field studies.

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

#66

Post by pyman »

luqtas wrote: post #62
ofalkaed wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

great read: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187861462... fungi has memory and can decide to not grow on a previous hostile enviroment/direction edit: i'm skeptical about the fantastic type of journalism title. the paper points on using fungi electrical reactions to light to drive a robot, not the the otherwise, even less the fungi understanding a "robot" and using it. despite them showing spatial p…

What the article says is that fungi produces electrical spikes and those spikes may encode information and function like a primitive language to coordinate activity across the network.

But what if the environment was never hostile and they still avoid it? Some research hints that fungi can react to vibration, like stimuli, but there's no solid proof that mushrooms avoid trails because of it. Still, it feels worth investigating.

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

#67

Post by wizzwizz4 »

lisper wrote: post #51
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most people have rudimentary language ability, including the ability to express preferences, as they learn to walk. The average one-year-old child is plenty aware of the world.

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

#68

Post by IAmBroom »

larodi wrote: post #40
cloudbonsai wrote: post #19

This seems to be one of the researches from Organic Robotics Lab at Cornell Univ. https://orl.mae.cornell.edu/ https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2024/08/biohybrid-robots-co... I believe that "learn" is a bit too strong word here. The fungi is essentially a UV light sensor. The researchers made a robot that moves in a certain way based on the biological signal. So the mushroom is more like a passive sensor then an acti…

It can be firing in arbitrary banner and we’ll still call it movement. Like the LLM does random and lossy decompression and we give it context and meaning…

cloudbonsai disputed the word "learned", and you countered by validating the word "movement". A completely orthogonal argument.

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

#69

Post by IAmBroom »

paweladamczuk wrote: post #54

I would guess you could achieve similar results with a rat's or cat's brain, but I wonder at which point ethical dilemmas start creeping in. When the fungi learns to ask for food, perhaps?

Perhaps you are wholly unaware of our past history of experimentation on living rats.
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