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Hybrid Robot Uses Rat Brain
CowboyRobot writes "After two recent stories of artificial brains used to control rats and one about MIT doing the reverse, NYTimes now has a piece on similar work done at Georgia Tech From the article:
"...the layer of rat neurons is grown over an array of electrodes that pick up the neurons' electrical activity. A computer analyzes the activity of the several thousand brain cells in real time to detect spikes produced by neurons firing near an electrode." But this time you can buy one for $3,000."
Wired to the Brain of a Rat, a Robot Takes On the World
By ANNE EISENBERG
The nerve center of a conventional robot is a microprocessor of silicon and metal. But for a robot under development at Georgia Tech, commands are relayed by 2,000 or so cells from a rat's brain.
A group led by a university researcher has created a part mechanical, part biological robot that operates on the basis of the neural activity of rat brain cells grown in a dish. The neural signals are analyzed by a computer that looks for patterns emitted by the brain cells and then translates those patterns into robotic movement. If the neurons fire a certain way, for example, the robot's right wheel rotates once.
The leader of the group, Steve M. Potter, a professor in the Laboratory for Neuroengineering at Georgia Tech, calls his creation a Hybrot, short for hybrid robot.
"It's very much a symbiosis," he said, "a digital computer and a living neural network working together."
Dr. Potter has been building the system of hardware, software, incubators and rat neurons that constitute the Hybrot since 1993, when he was a postdoctoral student at the California Institute of Technology. He and his group have not only introduced the neurons to the world outside their dish; the team has also closely monitored minute changes that take place in the shape and connections of the neurons as they are stimulated, using techniques like time-lapse photography and laser imaging.
Dr. Potter hopes that close observation of how brain cells behave as they are exposed to a world of sensation will help researchers understand the way small groups of neurons go about learning. "If the network begins to get better at a job," he said, "we will watch what changed within the network to allow it to do that."
Dr. Jonathan Wolpaw, laboratory chief and professor of neuroscience at the Wadsworth Center of the New York State Department of Health and the State University of New York at Albany, said that Dr. Potter's research could yield a simple system for exploring the capacity of neurons and circuits to change based on incoming activity.
"These changes could be analogues of what happens in learning," Dr. Wolpaw said. "You are dealing with neurons, the same tissue as in a brain," although in a different setting and with different circuitry. "Some things presumably are in common, for example, the neuron's capacity for plasticity," he said.
In Dr. Potter's hybrid system, the layer of rat neurons is grown over an array of electrodes that pick up the neurons' electrical activity. A computer analyzes the activity of the several thousand brain cells in real time to detect spikes produced by neurons firing near an electrode.
A silver three-wheeled model of the robot is commercially available through the Swiss robotics maker K-Team (www.k-team.com) for about $3,000 and is about the size of a hockey puck. It trundles along at a top speed of one meter per second.
"We assign a direction of movement, say, a step forward, that is automatically triggered by a pattern of spikes," said Thomas DeMarse, a former member of Dr. Potter's group who is an assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering at the University of Florida. "Twenty of these patterns, for instance, means 20 rotations of the wheel."
As the robot moves, it functions as a sensory system, delivering feedback to the neurons through the electrodes. For example, Mr. DeMarse said, the robot has sensors for light and feeds electrical signals proportional to the light back to the electrodes. "We return information to the dish on the intensity of light as the robot gets closer and the light gets brighter."
The researchers monitor the activity of the neurons for new signals and new connections. Dr. Potter said that the feedback mechanism was crucial to the functioning of the neural network. In traditional, isolated cultured networks, he said, in which neurons are not connected to a body, the activity patterns of the neurons are la
Then you'd have a stroke, be knocked offline, and if you're lucky you'd be back surfing as Windows XP Home.
Karma whorin' since 1999
You can buy a copy of the robot base they are using, but it doesn't include the cybernetic rat brain.
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Whatever happened to the stereotypical guniea pigs? I think we should put their brains in robots, and see what happens.
When you don't have a leg to stand on, don't even get up.
If you could create a multi-laminar structure, this setup might be ideal for an artificial retina. Currently, the bionic retinas being used are nowhere near as sensitive as they need to be to create any useful phototransduction, even if the neural retinal substrate underneath remained intact (which it does not). A multilaminar device could sandwich photosensitive elements combined with neural substrates that would function as the neural interface to the output of the retina, the remaining ganglion cells.
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Who knew they were transplanting rat brains into aibo robot dogs!
Back in the day, we used to talk about robots. But for us, it was always a frightening thing. Then saturday night live did a commercial about robots stealing our medicine! Believe you me, THAT had me scared for a while! I know it was satire, but it's not hard to imagine robots living off the powerful medicines we old people use!
Not that this isn't cool and all, but:
I don't want to be around when this thing becomes aware enough to take retribution for countless generations of lab rat torture! Someone will stumble into the lab and find a scientist's brain wired into a speak-n-spell, with a rat-bot-shaped hole in the wall and a trail of cheese crumbs...
"Here's another one: 'More brains, and bring back Hawaiian Fridays'"
5 -03&res=l
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2002-0
Specifically, the part at the end:
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
This rat-to-robot or robot-to-rat research thing is strange. Two things spring to mind :
- Isn't this rat brain interfacing business just a clever way of saying "ahem, moving right along" after decades of general-purpose AI research failure ?
- What the hell do these people target rats that much ? don't mice do the trick too ? or cats or dogs ? Some years ago, bio-computer interfacing experiments were conducted with squids, because they have very large neurons that are easy to work with : have squids complained to the PETA ? or maybe some of these researchers have pest have family members who work in the rats control business.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Seems fitting that NYTimes ran a story on this. How long before we start to see these things in NYC subway tunnels?
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
I will wait until i can purchase a ratbrain pci card before I jump on the bandwagon. Imagine the image recognition possibilites :)
Move Zig!
"And then the old man's kids came. The robot remembered them and began to cry. But the tears short circuited the robot and he died and fell onto the kids. And none of them lived..." Hope that doesn't happen!
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Does the rat wonder why the f--k it has a robotic body?
How do they keep the nerve cells alive? Are they actually fed, oxygenated, and protected from infection?
They are only using female rats for this experiment. If they use male rats the report would probably look something like
....
Monday morning
Robot tried too shag other robots
Monday afternoon
Robot refused to move from candy vending machine
Monday evening
Robot tried too shag other robots
Tuesday morning
Robot tried too shag other robots
How long before they turn us all into remote control human drones?
Who are "they", and why would they bother spending the money on remote-control when they can just lawsuit- and reality-TV- us into submission?
Robot : "Gee, Brain what do you want to do tonight?" : "The same thing we do every night Pinky. Follow that stupid light around!"
Brain
Sprinkled right through Cordwainer Smith's short stories written in the 1960s are altered animals and bio-computers. In particular one of his stories (I wish I could remember which one - "Think Blue, Count Two"?) mentions a computer made of "laminated mouse brain". Few things seem to happen today that weren't anticipated earlier by at least one sci-fi writer...
If you are looking for more information or a new perspective, check out the actual news release by Georgia Tech.
Georgia Tech Researchers Use Lab Cultures to Control Robotic Device
Go Yellow Jackets!
As a scientist, I regret that you are not my animal.
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
At least we'll never run out of politicians now. :-)
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
Actually, they were taken from a rat, they were just explanted on to a petri dish to grow. If you really want the details, they are taken from a live pup that was surgically removed from the mother's uterus - its called embronic cultures. Its also the only way to get decent rat cultures, so get used to it. And you are right, it is worth it.
I have seen this guy give a talk every year for 5 years. He always says the same thing "we are close to observing something here." The truth is that no one has a clue whether he will ever see anything in these cultures that is meaningful. These are dissociated cells that are living in a culture dish. The laminar structure that the hippocampus has is destroyed in this process. It would be like throwing a bunch of wires together and hoping to come up with a few logic gates. It is all hype right now. The neurons are not "controlling" the robot at all - the neurons have yet to show any organized activity. Even if they did - would you know what it meant??? I would be very surprised if this ever worked in its current incarnation...
They invade our kitchens, and we fall back. They steal entire cheeses, and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far, and no farther. And I will make the mice-borg pay for what they have done!
Repeal the DMCA!
...Beowulf clusters of cheese :)
"So there he is, risen from the dead. Like that fella, E. T." - Father Ted Crilly
This reminds me of previous posts of similar experiments involving eel and lamprey brains. So, this doesn't exactly seem like anything new. (Those other articles were from 2000 and 2001!) So it just seems like they used a rat brain instead of an eel or lamprey brain. Even having the "light sensor attraction" thing was done with the lampreys.
Karma: NaN