[Cyborg] rat brain robots

Adam Skory askory at gmail.com
Thu Oct 7 17:14:49 UTC 2010


Kevin Warwick gave a talk at CMU just a few weeks ago in which he
talked about this and some other research. The wiring of neurons to
electrode arrays is VERY cool, and very promising, but I'm really
unconvinced about the so-called "learning" of his robots.

He also talked at-length about getting an electrode array implanted
into some nerves in his arm. Using this to output signals from his
body to the computer is very impressive. However, as far as the things
he did to input signals from computer to brain, these seemed like they
could all be done using non-invasive displays, (i.e. haptics). I feel
in a certain sense this obsession with direct electrical stimulation
of nerves has held back sensory extension technology by being
expensive and dangerous, but in terms of bandwith per square cm it's
pretty unbeatable!

-Skory

On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 9:37 AM, Eric Boyd <mrericboyd at yahoo.com> wrote:
> http://singularityhub.com/2010/10/06/videos-of-robot-controlled-by-rat-brain-amazing-technology-still-moving-forward/
>
> Kevin Warwick has been busy!  Apparently they have been culturing rat
> neurons, wiring them up to robots using electrode arrays and bluetooth,
> and figuring out how to train the "rat brain" to drive the robot around!
>  Videos show progress as being pretty good!
>
> The article links three academic papers they have written, but of course
> the full text is behind paywalls.  Anyone have access to those journals?
>
> Amazingly, Warwick's homepage (kevinwarwick.com) doesn't mention this
> research at all, especially since there are articles from the BBC about
> this from 2 years ago.
>
> I also found some research by Steve Potter of GATech in 2002, although
> he seems to be focussed on the neural culturing and electrode
> technologies, rather than the cyborg aspects.
>
> http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/13047/?a=f
> http://www.neuro.gatech.edu/groups/potter/animat.html
>
> Eric
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