Exploding Aardvark

A bright yellow slime mould that can grow to several metres in diameter has been put in charge of a scrabbling, six-legged robot.

The Physarum polycephalum slime, which naturally shies away from light, controls the robot’s movement so that it too keeps out of light and seeks out dark places in which to hide itself.

Klaus-Peter Zauner at the University of Southampton, UK, who developed the slime-controlled bot with colleagues from Kobe University in south-central Japan, says the idea is to find simpler ways to control a robot�s behaviour.

“The computers we have today are very good for what we built them for,” he told New Scientist. “But, in a complex or paradoxical environment, things tend not to work out.”