Tagged: Biology and Robotics

Robot with a BIOLOGICAL BRAIN

Robot Controlled by RAT BRAIN CELLS – 31002

Kevin Warwick, once a cyborg and still a researcher in cybernetics at the University of Reading, has been working on creating neural networks that can control machines. He and his team have taken the brain cells from rats, cultured them, and used them as the guidance control circuit for simple wheeled robots. Electrical impulses from the bot enter the batch of neurons, and responses from the cells are turned into commands for the device. The cells can form new connections, making the system a true learning machine.  He and his competitors continue to move this technology forward – animal cyborgs are real.

Robot with a rat brain

Biology and Robotics – Robot Controlled With Rat Brain Cells – 11009

AFTER buttoning up a lab coat, snapping on surgical gloves and spraying them with alcohol, I am deemed sanitary enough to view a robot’s control system up close. Without such precautions, any fungal spores on my skin could infect it. “We’ve had that happen. They just stop working and die off,” says Mark Hammond, the system’s creator.