The soft, clear gel blobs not only let you play video games, PongOver time, you may improve.
Interfacing with an adapted version of the game via an electrode array resulted in a simple polymer Hydrogel There was a noticeable increase in accuracy and the rallies lasted longer, a finding that demonstrates the ability to remember even very basic material.
Of course, the gel is a long way from an artificial brain, but its newly discovered capabilities suggest fascinating new avenues for research and development.
“Our work shows that even very simple materials can exhibit complex, adaptive behaviors typically associated with biological systems and advanced AI.” Biomedical engineer Yoshikatsu Hayashi explains: of the University of Reading, UK.
“This opens up exciting possibilities for developing new types of ‘smart’ materials that can learn and adapt to their environment.”
The hydrogels in question are based on electroactive polymers. EAPThese are polymers that change size and shape when an electric current is passed through them, and they are often used in actuators and sensors as a sort of artificial muscle.
In 2022, a team of researchers demonstrated that they could teach a clump of human brain cells in a dish how to play. Pong By giving feedback that tells the glob whether or not it was successful in hitting a simple pixel “ball” with a pixel “paddle”.
Vincent Strong, William Holderbaum and Hayashi, biomedical engineers at the University of Reading, wanted to see whether something much simpler than human brain tissue could exhibit similar learning abilities.
EAP hydrogels were a logical test subject: ions (charged particles) within the hydrogel’s matrix of cross-linked polymer chains move when an electric current is applied, causing the gel to change shape.
Previously, Lin and others have demonstrated how to exploit this phenomenon to make hydrogels. Beat in sync with the pacemakerJust like the heart beating and expanding and contracting.
During the course of their study, the researchers noticed that the hydrogel retained the “memory” of a heartbeat even after the pacemaker was turned off.
“The rate at which the hydrogel swells takes much longer than the time it takes to swell initially, which means the next movement of the ions is influenced by the previous movement, creating a kind of memory.” Strong explains:.
“The continued rearrangement of ions within the hydrogel builds on previous rearrangements within the hydrogel, continuing all the way back to when it was first created and the ions were uniformly distributed.”
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To take hydrogels to the next level, the researchers developed a special interface and PongJust like playing ping pong against a wall, one paddle bounces off the opposite wall of the digital court.
The researchers used electrical stimulation to tell the gel where the ball was randomly located and measured the ion flow to gauge the position of the paddle, and they also looked at how long a rally between a gel-controlled paddle and the wall without a miss lasted, finding that the rallies got longer over time.
It took about 20 minutes for the gel to reach its peak. Pong Skill level.
“Over time, as the ball moves, the gel accumulates a memory of every movement, and the paddle then moves with the ball in a simulated environment.” Strong says“The ions move in such a way that they map the memory of all your movements over time, and this ‘memory’ improves your performance.”
The researchers say the memory is evidence of an emergent ability that the material wasn’t specifically designed or trained for, but it doesn’t mean the material is sentient or acting purposefully — just that it retains the impression of a physical effect, like the skin on your cheek after lying on a crinkly pillow.
But the discovery is still exciting, and it certainly opens up some interesting avenues of research, especially in terms of uncovering the mechanisms behind memory and whether it can be trained to perform other tasks.
“We’ve shown that memory can emerge in the hydrogel, but the next step is to see whether we can concretely demonstrate that learning is occurring.” Strong says.
This study Cell Report Physical Sciences.
