Physarum Boats: If Plasmodium Sailed It Would Never Leave a Port

Physarum Boats: If Plasmodium Sailed It Would Never Leave a Port

Blog Article

Plasmodium of Physarum polycephalum is a single huge (visible Ring Terminal by naked eye) cell with a myriad of nuclei.The plasmodium is a promising substrate for non-classical, nature-inspired computing devices.It is capable of approximation of the shortest path in a maze, computation of planar proximity graphs and plane tessellations, primitive memory and decision making.The unique properties of the plasmodium make it an ideal candidate for a role of amorphous Adjustable Shelf biological robots with massive parallel information processing and distributed inputs and outputs.We show that when adhered to a lightweight object resting on a water surface the plasmodium can propel the object by oscillating its protoplasmic pseudopodia.

In experimental laboratory conditions and computational experiments we study phenomenology of the plasmodium-floater system, and possible mechanisms of controlling motion of objects propelled by on-board plasmodium.