  The slime mould Physarum polycephalum is a suitable candidate organism for
soft-matter robotics because it exhibits controllable transport, movement and
guidance behaviour. Physarum may be considered as a smart computing and
actuating material since both its motor and control systems are distributed
within its undifferentiated tissue and can survive trauma such as excision,
fission and fusion of plasmodia. Thus it may be suitable for exploring the
generation and distribution of micro-actuation in individual units or planar
arrays. We experimentally show how the plasmodium of Physarum is shaped to
execute controllable oscillatory transport behaviour applicable in small hybrid
engines. We measure the lifting force of the plasmodium and demonstrate how
protoplasmic transport can be influenced by externally applied illumination
stimuli. We provide an exemplar vehicle mechanism by coupling the oscillations
of the plasmodium to drive the wheels of a Braitenberg vehicle and use light
stimuli to effect a steering mechanism. Using a particle model of Physarum we
show how emergent travelling wave patterns produced by competing oscillatory
domains may be used to to generate spatially represented actuation patterns. We
demonstrate different patterns of controllable motion, including linear,
reciprocal, rotational and helical, and demonstrate in simulation how dynamic
oscillatory patterns may be translated into motive forces for simple transport
of substances within a patterned environment.
