“Mushrooms don’t like light, they grow in dark areas,” says Robert Shepherd, an engineer at Cornell University and one of the study’s authors. “Since they really don’t like light, that was a strong signal.” By shining more ultraviolet light on the mushroom-computer interface, the mushrooms’ electrical signals became stronger in response, causing the robots to move faster.
How are these biohybrid robots used?
The new technology could be used in agriculture: fungi are extremely sensitive to their environment and robots like these could detect chemical contaminants, poisons or pathogens in fields better than synthetic robots.
According to Anand Mishra, an engineer at Cornell University and another author of the study, fungi can handle extreme conditions. Fungal cells can survive in very salty water or extreme cold, which may make fungal biohybrid robots better in extreme environments than animal or plant biohybrid robots. Fungi can also survive radiation better than many other organisms, so they could help detect radiation in dangerous locations.
The new research is an exciting advance in biohybrid robotics, says Vickie Webster-Wood, an engineer at Carnegie Mellon University who was not involved in the study. A big advantage of biohybrid robots is their sustainability. “If you try to build a swarm of robots to monitor a coral reef and build them out of electronics with heavy metals and plastics and you can’t collect them all, you’re going to create a lot of waste that ends up in the environment,” says Webster-Wood.
By building with biological materials, engineers can use materials found in the robot’s environment. For example, a biohybrid robot made from plant cells can help with reforestation, or a medical robot made from human cells could be placed inside its body. At the end of these robots’ missions, less cleanup is required and there is less risk of harmful pollutants being left behind.
