Researcher Andy Adamatzky is breeching the gap between science and science fiction in his mold-obitics. He is using plasmodium, a type of slime mold, a “naturally occurring substance with its own built in intelligence,” to create the next generation of “robots.”
In his paper, Towards Physarum Robots which is published by Elsevier Ltd, Adamatzky’s experiments conclude that his mold “is capable of computing a basic spanning tree and manipulating of light-weight objects. We speculate that our results pave the pathways towards the design and implementation of amorphous biological robots.”
* Mechagodzilla is a fictional robot from the Godzilla series circa 1974.