Amoeboid Robot Moves Autonomously Without Centralized Brain

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."

Comments

When interviewed....

[Man On Pink Corner]

... the robot reportedly announced plans to seek the GOP Presidential nomination.

Re:When interviewed....

[zill]

It's gonna be tough to snatch those robot votes away from Romney.

Combine with Pink Slime / Meat Slurry

[retroworks]

The protein that crawls into your mouth while you sleep. Then you can find financing from USA fast food chains. ( http://tinyurl.com/2aj732 ) Otherwise, not very marketable.

Blob bots

[bmo]

Researcher Takuya Umedachi of Hiroshima University has been perfecting his blob-bot for years,

>modeled after slime mold

We would do well to look to Nature.

Here's one of Nature's blob bots in action

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7yUYDMtsfU&feature=related

--
BMO

cool hardware, lackluster intelligence

[steve.cri]

This type of hardware may be useful to implement e.g. limbs or fingers within a more complex system. For autonomus entities, the behavioural, force-feedback AI approach a la Braitenberg is a little dated. I think it does not allow to implement behavioural patterns complex enough to be of any practical use.

they can solve mazes

[mapkinase]

... by enumeration.

Nature 2000 paper 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.

Re:they can solve mazes

[Fred Ferrigno]

Something has to drive the process of creating memories, which are internal physical states that have a correspondence with external reality. You could think of the direction of a plant's shoots as a kind of memory that encodes the direction of the Sun. The work is done by a simple, mindless process, but it pretty much has to be.

Comparisons

[Lord Grey]

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.

Are we absolutely certain that some slime molds achieves 'human-like' decision-making capacity rather than some humans achieving slime mold-like decision-making capacity?

Sorry. I probably shouldn't bring U.S. politics into the discussion so early in the threads.

Re:Comparisons

[bitflippant]

I thought is was foreign policy. Oh wait, it would have to burn the place down too for that.

Re:hey!

[flyneye]

No, it's not.
But these blobs have been undulating around malls for years, utilizing directional decision making to navigate the food courts, the bathrooms and regulate shopper traffic with their massive buttocks,bellys and arm fat dewlaps.

The real question is who stands to profit from controlling these Blob Bots or are they truly autonomous ?

Disturbing trends

[dmmiller2k]

Might this be just a publicity stunt to promote, for example, a new "Rise of The Blob" movie?

If so, it's just another lame attempt to cash in on prior art, rather than coming up with something original.

Who Knew Slime Molds Were That Smart?

[Greyfox]

Maybe I shouldn't have been eating them all those years in nethack....

Sounds like a boss I once had

[vikingpower]

"Moves autonomously without centralized brain".