A team at the University of the West of England (UWE)
has secured £228,000 in funding to turn single-cell organisms into
engineering robots.
In recent years, single-celled organisms have been used to
control six-legged robots, but Andrew Adamatzky at UWE wants to go
one step further by making a complete "robot" out of a plasmodium
slime mould, Physarum polycephalum, a commonly occurring mould that
moves towards food sources such as bacteria and fungi, and shies
away from light.
Affectionately dubbed Plasmobot, it will be "programmed" using
light and electromagnetic stimuli to trigger chemical reactions
similar to a complex piece of chemistry called the
Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction, which Adamatzky previously used to
build liquid logic gates for a synthetic brain. By understanding
and manipulating these reactions, says Adamatzky, it should be
possible to program Plasmobot to move in certain ways, to "pick up"
objects by engulfing them and even assemble them.
Initially, Plasmobot will work with and manipulate tiny pieces
of foam, because they "easily float on the slime", says Adamatzky.
The long-term aim is to use such robots to help assemble the
components of micromachines, he says.