Hydrogels can play Pong by ‘remembering’ previous patterns of electrical simulation
Non-living hydrogels can play the video game Pong and improve their gameplay with more experience, researchers report. The researchers hooked hydrogels up to a virtual game environment and then applied a feedback loop between the hydrogel’s paddle — encoded by the distribution of charged particles within the hydrogel — and the ball’s position — encoded by electrical stimulation. With practice, the hydrogel’s accuracy improved by up to 10%, resulting in longer rallies. The researchers say that this demonstrates the ability of non-living materials to use ‘memory’ to update their understanding of the environment, though more research is needed before it could be said that hydrogels can ‘learn.’
In creating a pair of new robots, researchers cultivated an unlikely component, one found on the forest floor: fungal mycelia. By harnessing mycelia's innate electrical signals, the researchers discovered a new way of controlling 'biohybrid' robots that can potentially react to their environment better than their purely synthetic counterparts.
Inspired by living systems, researchers have developed a new material that changes its electrical behavior based on previous experience, effectively giving it a basic form of adaptive memory. Such adaptive materials could play a vital role in the next generation of medical and environmental sensors, as well as in soft…
Robotics researchers, engineers and materials scientists showed it is possible to make programmable, nonelectronic circuits that control the actions of soft robots by processing information encoded in bursts of compressed air.