Slimy hairs: Hair sensors made with slime mould

Abstract: Slime mould Physarum polycephalum is a large single cell visible by unaided eye. We design a slime mould implementation of a tactile hair, where the slime mould responds to repeated deflection of hair by an immediate high-amplitude spike and a prolonged increase in amplitude and width of its oscillation impulses. We demonstrate that signal-to-noise ratio of the Physarum tactile hair sensor averages near six for the immediate response and two for the prolonged response.