Ever wondered if you could build a robot controlled by chemical reactions? [Marb] explores this wild concept in his video, merging chemistry and robotics in a way that feels straight out of sci-fi. From glowing luminol reactions to creating artificial logic gates, [Marb]—a self-proclaimed tinkerer—takes us step-by-step through crafting the building blocks for what might be the simplest form of a chemical brain.
In this video, the possibilities of an artificial chemical brain take centre stage. It starts with chemical reactions, including a fascinating luminol-based clock reaction that acts as a timer. Then, a bionic robot hand makes its debut, complete with a customised interface bridging the chemical and robotic worlds. The highlight? Watching that robotic hand respond to chemical reactions!
The project relies on a “lab-on-a-chip” approach, where microfluidics streamline the processes. Luminol isn’t just for forensic TV shows anymore—it’s the star of this experiment, with resources like this detailed explanation breaking down the chemistry. For further reading, New Scientist has you covered.
We’ve had interesting articles on mapping the human brain before, one on how exactly brains might work, or even the design of a tiny robot brain. Food for thought, or in other words: stirring the gray matter.
The “New Scientist” link also leads to the luminol oscillator paper. The correct link is as follows: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23931950-100-why-creating-a-chemical-brain-will-be-how-we-understand-consciousness/
Marb is back, thanks for being a constant source of inspiration and fresh ideas!
Thanks. I will conduct further research in this field:)
This post looks automated, the “lab-on-chip” tech he mentions is a microfluidics term, he’s working in macro scale and the only reference to lab on chip in the video is an image credit.
The article isn’t automated. I’ve been in contact with the author. It’s also not macroscale chemistry but microscale chemistry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microscale_chemistry). Microfluidics deals with the behavior of liquids and gases in the smallest of spaces.
Markus, lab on chip involves EXTREMELY tiny volumes, microliters of fluid. Marb doesn’t claim that his luminol experiment was lab-on-chip throughout the entire video, because it simply isn’t. Microfluidics is a field dealing with this sort of tech, Marb is obviously working at human scale.
Meanwhile, Heidi is stating that he’s using tech that’s not featured in the content whatsoever, based on an image caption in the description.
I see. Then that’s cleared up. The video doesn’t contain a microfludic device, but I’ll come back to it in one of my next videos:)
I would love to see some developments in the space, the commercial nanopore sample prep hardware is still prohibitively expensive to play around with. The thought emporium has made some videos covering some papers that have made simple microfluid circuits with shrinkydinks.
Luminol reactions can be tied easily to some metabolic cycles and make an easy basis for molecular logic gates in yeast (it also amplifies the signal gain for logic gates), I reported on one cell line used for drug response for uni a few months ago and mainly involves binding luminol with the precursor metabolite.
I’ve bought my own scope to look at timed release of eGFP under a hemocytometer in realtime, but my focus is around the cells reporting activity more than the fluidics.
@Sazoji: I’ll probably use laser engraved PMMA plates and sandwich them together. I started some research on microfluidic devices in one of my last videos. I’ll also explore possibilities of home-made electroosmotic pumps and selective ion exchange membranes.
Finally getting to the “brain in the bottle” part of evolution. Thanks for sharing your work. Hope it inspires the next generation and we can move to developing “fly” brains for controlling drones.
A long way to go but someone has to do the first steps.