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 active pilot.
I’m skeptical that the mushroom is in any way “learning to crawl”. It looks more like the mushroom naturally produces signals in response to light, and the robot triggers a walk cycle when it sees that signal.
Still, a child telling their parent to walk isn't actually walking.
It could easily not even know what walking means, just know that there's food when it tells mom to go to the kitchen.
I used to ask my grandmother for "plain water" because she always brought me milk. I was very disappointed when I asked someone else for plain water, because I had no idea why grandma's was better.
Because the brain has to continually monitor hundreds of inputs like gravity, pressure, balance, visuals, muscle feedback, etc and integrate them with hundreds of outputs to muscles and coordinate the whole thing which keeps changing, that's walking. All this mushroom does is emit a signal that it was already emitting (ie. It's learned nothing) and the robotocists build a walking system around that which handles all the complexity of walking.
Let me rephrase: what's the difference between a child telling their parent to walk and the conscious part of your brain telling the unconscious part to walk? (BTW, I agree that the mushroom isn't learning anything. My point is just that a child communicating with their parents is not a good analogy.)
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.
>Because the brain has to continually monitor hundreds of inputs like gravity
Human brains cannot monitor gravity. We're actually very bad at it.
Also you're failing to understand the scaling involved here, so to speak. I'm actually really not interested in trying to explain this if you can't be bothered with spending a few minutes on how nervous systems work.
Not sure about this particular experiment, but there is certainly interesting potential in integrating biological organisms (or parts thereof) with larger robotic and mechanical systems.
Recently I saw a video of a turtle which was given a skateboard. It quickly learned how to zip around the house, chasing the cat, etc. It was a simple demostration of how technology, even as primitive as the wheel, can augment the abilities of an organism - especially a living being with sensors (eyes) and neural network (brain).
It also reminds me of the goldfish in a bowl, attached to a small motorized vehicle, which was given the ability to navigate it by swimming in different directions. It soon learned to use this system as an extension of its body, exploring the house, bumping into things like a Roomba with a live brain.
Suppose it's in the same field of exploration as those super-soldiers with Gundam-style body suits and computerized helmets projecting a live data feed to their retinas, maybe eventually embedding neural connectors directly in the head.
Regarding the turtle and the goldfish, how can we really say these animals learned how to operate these things? I’m not sure I’d be able to tell the difference between a goldfish just swimming around the tank like normal versus one swimming around the tank with intention.
Oh that's a more proper study than the amateur experiment I saw.
> For this purpose, we trained goldfish to use a Fish Operated Vehicle (FOV), a wheeled terrestrial platform that reacts to the fish’s movement characteristics, location and orientation in its water tank to change the vehicle’s; i.e., the water tank’s, position in the arena.
> The fish were tasked to “drive” the FOV towards a visual target in the terrestrial environment, which was observable through the walls of the tank, and indeed were able to operate the vehicle, explore the new environment, and reach the target regardless of the starting point, all while avoiding dead-ends and correcting location inaccuracies.
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 active pilot.
It could easily not even know what walking means, just know that there's food when it tells mom to go to the kitchen.
I used to ask my grandmother for "plain water" because she always brought me milk. I was very disappointed when I asked someone else for plain water, because I had no idea why grandma's was better.
How is that any different from a brain telling its body to walk?
Human brains cannot monitor gravity. We're actually very bad at it.
Also you're failing to understand the scaling involved here, so to speak. I'm actually really not interested in trying to explain this if you can't be bothered with spending a few minutes on how nervous systems work.
Would you describe that situation as the mushroom learning to dab?
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necrobotics
[1]https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_7LUszWRqco
Does dead fish swimming upstream not count? doi:10.1017/S0022112005007925 (open access link: https://www.liaolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2006Beal_...)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep#Skroders/...
Recently I saw a video of a turtle which was given a skateboard. It quickly learned how to zip around the house, chasing the cat, etc. It was a simple demostration of how technology, even as primitive as the wheel, can augment the abilities of an organism - especially a living being with sensors (eyes) and neural network (brain).
It also reminds me of the goldfish in a bowl, attached to a small motorized vehicle, which was given the ability to navigate it by swimming in different directions. It soon learned to use this system as an extension of its body, exploring the house, bumping into things like a Roomba with a live brain.
Suppose it's in the same field of exploration as those super-soldiers with Gundam-style body suits and computerized helmets projecting a live data feed to their retinas, maybe eventually embedding neural connectors directly in the head.
> For this purpose, we trained goldfish to use a Fish Operated Vehicle (FOV), a wheeled terrestrial platform that reacts to the fish’s movement characteristics, location and orientation in its water tank to change the vehicle’s; i.e., the water tank’s, position in the arena.
> The fish were tasked to “drive” the FOV towards a visual target in the terrestrial environment, which was observable through the walls of the tank, and indeed were able to operate the vehicle, explore the new environment, and reach the target regardless of the starting point, all while avoiding dead-ends and correcting location inaccuracies.
From fish out of water to new insights on navigation mechanisms in animals - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01664...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ_0ImDYrPY
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7H2IDc-5QdQ
https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/fish-control-vehicles-and-nav...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYHMc3-f3v8