Scientists have found that a pile of goo can play Pong if you give it a little electricity as a boost. It can also learn to get better over time. The Manchester, UK, team added ions to a polymer to make it react to electricity. They then hooked it up to a computer playing Pong on a 3×3 grid.
The hydrogel swells faster than it shrinks, while its rate of swelling slows even as the electrical current remains constant. The researchers say that these properties create a rudimentary sort of memory, as signs of the swelling remain recorded in the gel.
"Instead of it just knowing what's immediately happened, it has a memory of the ball's motion over the entirety of the game," says Strong. "So it sort of gains an experience of the ball's general motion, not just its current position. It sort of becomes a black-box neural network that has a memory of the ball's behaviour, how it behaves and how it moves."
Although the gel can only perform relatively simple tasks, the authors believe it could create more efficient algorithms for traditional computers using fewer resources. Additionally, the hydrogel might serve as a standalone analog computer, but more work would need to be done to discover if that is possible or practical.
Previously:
• Sons of Pong
• Homebrew Pong watch
• Mondrian pong
• Pong is now 50 years old. Here's the story of its invention.
