Amoeboid Robot Moves Autonomously Without Centralized Brain 38
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."
Re:hey! (Score:4, Informative)
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 ?
Nice job (Score:1)
You just created a Shoggoth.
When interviewed.... (Score:4, Funny)
... the robot reportedly announced plans to seek the GOP Presidential nomination.
Re:When interviewed.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Get back to me when the Republican statists are willing to keep their state out of my bedroom.
Re: (Score:1)
So.... how many Maverick Points does a vague, bitter-sounding AC post on Slashdot fetch these days, anyway?
Re: (Score:1)
>>keep their state out of my bedroom.
Yet still insist we pay for your gal's birth control and/or abortions, right?
Re: (Score:2)
Yet still insist we pay for your gal's birth control and/or abortions, right?
As long as you insist I pay for your wars of choice, yes. It seems like a fair trade, doesn't it?
blob-bot (Score:2)
The ideal sexbot to replace my significant other.
Re: (Score:2)
Your significant other is an amorphous blob? Has she tried Jenny Craig?
Re: (Score:1)
He has a Feeder/Gainer [wikipedia.org] fetish...
Oblig. (Score:1)
I, for one, welcome our new robotic slime-mould overlords
Re: (Score:2)
Combine with Pink Slime / Meat Slurry (Score:3)
Real amoeba superior (Score:1)
A real amoeba is still a vastly superior design in comparison to this robot.
Background on Slimy Computation (Score:1)
Background on Slimy Computation: http://tikalon.com/blog/blog.php?article=2011/mould
Blob bots (Score:5, Funny)
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 [youtube.com]
--
BMO
cool hardware, lackluster intelligence (Score:2)
they can solve mazes (Score:5, Interesting)
... by enumeration.
Nature 2000 paper [nature.com] 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: (Score:2)
can I invent a word here? It's more nutritropism than memory. Much like plants grow toward the sun (phototropism), or their roots grow down and their shoots grow up (geotropism), but following a food source.
Re: (Score:3)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
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: (Score:2)
Growing to encompass everything, then withdrawing from areas that have been sucked dry and barren?
That's not US politics, that's US economy.
Re: (Score:2)
Disturbing trends (Score:2)
Might this be just a publicity stunt to promote, for example, a new "Rise of The Blob [imdb.com]" 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? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Just start worrying when the glowing green marshmallow [gametrailers.com] runs up the stick.
Sounds like a boss I once had (Score:3)