Living tissues are still far from being used as practical components in biohybrid robots due to limitations in lifespan, sensitivity to environmental factors, and stringent culture procedures. In this paper, we introduce fungal mycelium as an easy to use and robust, living component in biohybrid robots. We construct two biohybrid robots that use the electrophysiological activity of living mycelium to control its artificial actuators. The mycelia sense their environment and issue action potential-like spiking voltages as control signals to the motors and valves of the robots we designed and built. The paper highlights two key innovations: First, a vibration and EMI shielded mycelium electrical interface that allows for stable, long-term electrophysiological bioelectric recordings during untethered, mobile operation. Second, we develop a control architecture for robots inspired by neural central pattern generators, incorporating rhythmic patterns of positive and negative spikes from the living mycelia. We used these signals to control a walking soft robot as well as a wheeled hard robot. We demonstrated the use of these mycelium to respond to environmental cues by using UV light stimulation to augment the robots’ gaits.
python3 Fungi_signal_analysis.py