Brain Powered Robots!

Picture - Rise of the rat-brained robots - Diem Photography/University of Reading

Hello All,

This weeks post title, is a little weird, but at the end of this post should make sense!</p> <p>Researches have created a robot which is powered by the brain of a rat. When I say powered, by the brain of a rat I mean the rat brain takes control of such things as navigation, as would a human brain. I fell this is quite a development in robotics, as up until now (as far as I have known), the cognitive control, of a robot has been done with just hardware - chips etc.

The away rat brain works in the robot, is actiually quite clever. In fact the rat brain itself is (from what i have read), a collection of rat brain cells which researchers have grown. These cells were then put together, where they quickly grew connections to one another, and then communicate through electrical pulses. This as you would rightly assume, is similar to how our brains work. Once these connections were made, the researchers connected them to electrodes, which were in turn connected to an ultrasonic distance measurer. As you can see from the video (when you watch it), the brain cells were able (in a way), to understand the readings from the distance measurer to avoide objects. Now some of you may assume the brain is in the actual robot, but it is not! As the brain cannot leave the lab, due to such reasons, as tempreture, the robotic device itself sends readings back to the lab wirelessly, where the brain then interprets them.

As you can imagine the oppertuntites for this type of technology, are vast, and as you will see from the video - they express, the wish to understand how further parts of the brain work. You never know, some day as you have seen in the movies, we could all love for centuries :p having our heads but a robot body! However for now I think its still ok just to try to fully understand how our brains work.

Check out the video below:

Bye