Slime Mold and Logistics: Partners in Efficiency
By Alex Batty, MHI Marketing Communications Coordinator |@mhi_alex
Happy Friday y’all! I was trawling through the Internet for random bits of interesting (as one does) when I came across this little gem.
“A Map of the US… Made of Slime Mold”
In short, scientists took a tiny map of the US conducive to growing the slime mold and put little food centers representing major centers. Then the mold went to work. “Physarum polycephalum, a type of slime mold, grows tendrils in search of food and withdraws extraneous arms to focus on the most efficient paths between sources.”
This is basically nature’s way of computer modeling (hyperbole I know… just… let me have it, okay?) The slime mold finds routes that balance efficiency with resilience to damage, so it illustrates good networks for both transportation and communication.
One version of the experiment was run to determine the best routes for transportation in Tokyo, and actually closely modeled the existing routes.
Now, realize the story is from 2010, so you might have seen it before, but I have not, and of course, I tied it immediately to supply chain.
It wasn’t even that far of a leap this time! It’s literally supply chain and logistics… as mapped by slime mold.
Right now, much of delivery is constrained by the channels we can deliver in. Truckers have to use existing roads (though now I want a reality show called “Off-roader Delivery” full of action shots and UPS trucks jumping gorges). But in the future, efficiency could be increased if we use this type of mapping to determine where we lay new roads.
Some of what supply chain and logistics is playing with now is actually working with this. Drones, for example, are a way to skip using traditional delivery paths (roads) and just find an efficient route (yes, there will be problems with that, but I’m simplifying).
Now, obviously picking where new roads go is much more complex than this. There are more than 25 “food sources” to map to. But the idea is cool.
And the glow in the dark slime mold roadmap is pretty cool too.
Header image source: treehugger.com
