Visibuilt Leverages Reshape Biotech's Automated Imaging to Launch Mycelium-Powered Roads
- Marc Violo
- Nov 4
- 5 min read
Article in partnership with Reshape Biotech, a Danish company that develops advanced lab automation robots and a cloud-based AI platform to accelerate biological research and development.
Most readers here will know mycelium as a capable, adaptable builder of structures. In forest soils it colonises particulate matter, threads itself into gaps, and stabilises the whole. Visibuilt’s work takes that familiar behaviour and applies it to a long‑standing industrial material: mineral aggregates in pavement materials.
The motivation is straightforward. Conventional asphalt binder, bitumen, is fossil‑derived and typically processed and paved at temperatures well above 150 °C. Those conditions are energy and emissions intensive. A replacement that can be produced and applied without high heat would be an important step forward, provided it meets mechanical and durability requirements on the road.
Growing A Natural Binder
Visibuilt’s binder, visiBINDER, is produced by fermentation processes, using agricultural by‑products as primary carbon source with naturally occurring (non‑GMO) fungal strains. The fungus colonizes the substrate and grows around the aggregates so that the resulting composite behaves as a stonerich, mycelium bound material.
visiBINDER also demonstrates the adaptability of biological materials. As a platform technology, it can be tuned for different aggregate systems and performance requirements, enabling distinct products such as visiPAVER and visiBIT. visiPAVER combines agricultural waste streams, aggregates, and the binder to create environmentally friendly pavement, while visiBIT serves as an organic replacement for bitumen in asphalt. The underlying biology remains constant: fungal mycelium binding mineral structures into durable composites. Beyond these first applications, the potential use cases are limited less by chemistry than by imagination.
Oleksii Rebrov, Chief Scientific Officer and Co-founder of Visibuilt, has shared that field‑scale pilots have already been conducted using industrial asphalt equipment, notably without the heating step that conventional hot-asphalt mixes require. In practice that means the same plant, trucks and pavers can be used while omitting the energy-intensive processes; a test section has carried traffic without visible cracking during initial observation windows, and outdoor durability studies are ongoing.
From Manual Observation to Continuous Data
For fungal scientists, another interesting part of this story may be how the team is running its experiments. Manually screening a wide range of fungus–substrate combinations is not only slow but also subjective. Plate checks “by eye” make it difficult to compare assays across weeks, let alone relate early growth patterns to later mechanical outcomes. Visibuilt addressed this by instrumenting the biology. Automated time‑lapse imaging and analysis via Reshape Biotech's systems turned plates from occasional snapshots into continuous data streams.
Colonisation can be quantified as percentage surface coverage and intensity over time; growth curves can be compared between strains, substrates and inoculation strategies; and replicates become the default rather than the exception. Caroline Thyssen Petersen, a research scientist who has been with the company since its inception, noted that moving from manual ruler‑on‑a‑plate estimates to automated imaging and AI-enabled quantification made it feasible to screen “a lot of different strains” across “a lot of different substrates” with proper replication and consistent readouts, and that having all assays stored as organised time‑lapses made re‑analysis practical as the program evolved.
Solving the Visual Problem
The visual problem Visibuilt faces is not a textbook agar plate. Substrates are often dark, rocky and heterogeneous; the fungi are frequently white; and the desired outcome is uniform colonisation across an irregular surface.
In collaboration with Reshape’s data science team, an AI segmentation model was deployed to automatically quantify mycelial colonies and growth, achieving millimetre-level area precision.
As goals changed, switching organisms, testing different morphologies, or redefining what “success” on a plate means, models were retrained and applied retroactively to existing time‑lapses, extracting new measurements from previously run experiments. That ability to reuse data matters when the biology is moving quickly and sample throughput is precious.
Building a Disciplined Workflow
What emerges from this lab practice is a disciplined, repeatable workflow. Inoculation strategies vary, from central points to distributed “all‑over” seeding, depending on the question being asked. Colonisation is quantified by surface coverage and whiteness intensity; uniformity can be scored; and time‑series behaviour can be mapped to later mechanical testing on stone‑bound coupons.
Because every image is retained, new metrics can be applied as the team learns what correlates with strength and durability in the end product. It is a familiar pattern to anyone running applied mycology: turn qualitative observations into quantitative traces, then use those traces to decide which candidates deserve scale‑up.
The Path to Pilot Scale
Scale‑up itself has followed a deliberate path. After bench-top assays and small composite tests, a ~300 kg pilot batch was processed at an asphalt factory using standard equipment, without heating, and laid on a test section. The production line did not require modification; the trial behaved like a conventional job with the single exception that the burner stayed off.
Those results, combined with the strength achieved in the lab, now motivate the longer outdoor study program focused on water exposure, temperature cycling and fatigue. In parallel, the fermentation process is being standardized so that the binder’s properties are consistent between runs - a necessary step for any material that hopes to meet specification.
Starting from the Base Layer
At Fælledby, on the edge of Amager Fælled, Visibuilt’s material work has moved from pilot sections to on site. The neighborhood’s new mobility center uses visiPAVER, integrating a lab-grown composite into a living urban context.
Here, the idea of regenerative or self-healing infrastructure shifts from theory to field trial. The installation sits within an environment built around ecological continuity, offering an early glimpse of how biologically derived materials might one day sustain and repair the surfaces they form.
Method Over Marketing
For fungal R&D specialists, the take‑home is less about slogans and more about method. A fermentation‑made binder can, in principle, replace a significant source of heat and fossil input in road building. Demonstrating that requires the usual fungal R&D levers - strain selection, substrate formulation, moisture and aeration control - combined with quantitative, instrumented screening and a careful bridge to field conditions.
Visibuilt’s program shows how those pieces can be assembled: iterate on plates you can measure, build small composites you can break, and only then run factory‑scale material through the equipment that will eventually have to use it. The fact that this workflow is now producing road‑worthy sections is encouraging, but its most valuable output for the community may be the map from Petri dish to pavement.
Reshape Biotech is a Danish company that develops advanced lab automation robots and a cloud-based AI platform to accelerate biological research and development. Their technology automates repetitive tasks in labs, such as microbial growth monitoring, to increase experiment throughput, enable global collaboration, and provide deeper insights through AI-powered data analysis.
Learn more on: www.reshapebiotech.com