Robot that runs on rat brain cells
posted Aug 15th 2008 10:24am by Strom Carlsonfiled under: misc hacks, news, robots hacks
Scientists at the University of Reading have created a robot that runs not on microprocessors, but on brain cells extracted from a rat fetus. The robot is equipped with several sensors which stimulate the rat neurons whenever the robot approaches a wall; the response of the neurons then determines whether the robot avoids the wall or crashes into it. The truly fascinating bit is that the rat brain cells don’t automatically know how to respond to the stimuli from the sensors, but instead learn to respond appropriately through repeated stimuli.
No word yet on whether the scientists will teach the robot to sing “Despite all my rage / I am still just a brain in a vat”.
One word: awsome!
Posted at 11:44 am on Aug 15th, 2008 by JanezD