Tech

Robots are gaining new capabilities thanks to plants and fungi

Biohybrid technology helps machines sense and heal

Illustration of a robot covered with plants and wearing a mushroom hat. The robot stands in awesome fighter pose in front of a red dawn, as lightning bolts shoot from her torso and arc onto her massive bio-hybrid legs and upraised fists.

Incorporating living tissue into robots can help the machines better interact with their environment.

LAURIE GREASLEY

By Aaron Tremper

In the TV series Doctor Who, treeborgs supply fresh air to spaceship passengers. Part tree, part robot, these devices convert starlight into oxygen. In Nnedi Okorafor’s fantasy novel Zahrah the Windseeker, children receive their own “flora computers” made of leaves and vines, grown from CPU seeds and shaped into useful tech. Although these devices are fictional, flower-powered machines are getting real as a new generation of biohybrid technology blooms.