British scientists seek to make robot from mould

What exactly is an amorphous non-silicon biological robot, and why would we need one?

Researchers at the University of the West of England can answer both those questions: One, it’s a robot made of slime mould and, two, it could in future lead to revolutionary developments in medicine, computing and other areas.

Scientists at the university call their mould robot “plasmobot.” The name comes from the substance used to make the device: plasmodium, which is the vegetative stage of the slime mould Physarum polycephalum, a commonly occurring mould which lives in forests, gardens and most damp places in the UK. Funded by a £228,000 Leverhulme Trust grant, the research project aims to design the first every fully biological (no silicon components) amorphous massively-parallel robot.

This project is at the forefront of research into unconventional computing. Lead researcher Andy Adamatzky says previous research has already proved the ability of the mould to have computational abilities.

“Most people’s idea of a computer is a piece of hardware with software designed to carry out specific tasks,” said Adamatzky. “This mould, or plasmodium, is a naturally occurring substance with its own embedded intelligence. It propagates and searches for sources of nutrients and when it finds such sources it branches out in a series of veins of protoplasm. The plasmodium is capable of solving complex computational tasks, such as the shortest path between points and other logical calculations.”

Adamatzky continued, “Through previous experiments we have already demonstrated the ability of this mould to transport objects. By feeding it oat flakes, it grows tubes which oscillate and make it move in a certain direction carrying objects with it. We can also use light or chemical stimuli to make it grow in a certain direction.

“This new plasmodium robot, called plasmobot, will sense objects, span them in the shortest and best way possible, and transport tiny objects along pre-programmed directions. The robots will have parallel inputs and outputs, a network of sensors and the number-crunching power of super computers. The plasmobot will be controlled by spatial gradients of light, electro-magnetic fields and the characteristics of the substrate on which it is placed. It will be a fully controllable and programmable amorphous intelligent robot with an embedded massively parallel computer.”

Adamatzky says there are long-term potential benefits from harnessing this power: “We are at the very early stages of our understanding of how the potential of the plasmodium can be applied, but in years to come we may be able to use the ability of the mould for example to deliver a small quantity of a chemical substance to a target, using light to help to propel it, or the movement could be used to help assemble micro-components of machines. In the very distant future we may be able to harness the power of plasmodia within the human body, for example to enable drugs to be delivered to certain parts of the human body. It might also be possible for thousands of tiny computers made of plasmodia to live on our skin and carry out routine tasks freeing up our brain for other things. Many scientists see this as a potential development of amorphous computing, but it is purely theoretical at the moment.”

Adamatzky has recently edited a book, Artificial Life Models in Hardware, aimed at students and researchers of robotics. The book focusses on the design and real-world implementation of artificial-life robotic devices and covers a range of hopping, climbing, swimming robots, neural networks and slime mould and chemical brains.