Sunday, 15 April 2007

Seaweed removal using robot

The Vico Maintenance Department is investigating the use of slimy floating stuff (noticed yesterday floating in the vicinity of the North steps) to remove seaweed and graffiti by controlling a scrubbing robot. Southamton University have succeeded in getting slime-mould to control a robot, or, as an academic would put it:
"an experimental setup that interfaces an amoeboid plasmodium
of Physarum polycephalum with an omnidirectional hexapod robot to realise
an interaction loop between environment and plasticity in control. Through
this bio-electronic hybrid architecture the continuous negotiation process
between local intracellular reconfiguration on the micro-physical scale and
global behaviour of the cell in a macroscale environment"
Alternatively, Dr D could be used instead of the slime-mould.

1 comment:

Tamsi said...

We definitely need a detailed study now to find out which option would be more environmentally sound altogether: Slimeball Robot or Dr. D!