Have Mushrooms Grown - The Status and Expected Further Development of Digital Fluid Power

The evolvement of digital fluid power is compared with the growth of mushrooms which is a complex plant; the edible part – the fruit body which compares to a marketable final digital fluid power technology – relies on a widespread and strong mycelium which grows invisibly to most people in the soil. It is the physical and technological knowledge base of digital fluid power. Most of the research and development activities up to now were devoted to mycelium growth. These research activities happened at various places around the world and a few prosperous grounds for fluid power technologies added recently. However, a few mushrooms are already visible and will be harvested by industrial applications soon. Even though some genera and types of digital mushrooms can be identified yet, more of them will come up in future and it is not yet clearly visible which one will be picked first.