Rat Brains Fly Planes

An anonymous reader writes "According to The Age newspaper, scientists at the University of Florida have created neural cell cultures capable of flying an airplane using rat neurons. No actual planes are involved (yet), but the disassembled bits of rodent are already capable of level flight when hooked up to a simulator of an F-22."

Comments

But can a rat brain post dupe stories?

[__aagctu1952]

What do you know - it's a triple!

At least it's 2 months old this time and not still on the main page...

What could possibly go wrong?

[teneighty]

Great. Not only are they immortal and fearless - now they can fly fighter jets too.

What could possibly go wrong?

Whoa...

[highwaytohell]

This isnt news, John Travolta has been flying planes for years...

Re:Rat brains

[teslar]

On the other hand, whoah, ok, so we've got an organic way that MAY make a plane fly level, but seriously, can't we already do this with much less fragile computers?

Yeah, I haven't RTFA, so shoot me. But generally speaking, Neural Networks are not fragile at all, they're actually quite a robust way of doing things. So if we can decently train a Neural Network the size of a rat brain to fly a plane, this is a good thing and it will be much better at coping with unforeseen events than any traditional AI approach.
However, notice that there is training involved and the success or failure of any Neural Network will hinge on this - you can have a brain the size of a planet, but if you don't train it properly, it will perform awfully. Good training is paramount and since you can't actually prove (I mean mathematically prove) that a Neural Network will exactly do what you want it to do, you have to have an awful lot of faith in the training set. This is why Neural Nets are never used for safety-critical applications.

So there you go - Neural Networks can potentially be vastly superior to any traditional AI approach, but you won't be able to prove that yours actually is.

news is exactly a year old

[gcnaddict]

no wonder I thought this was deja-vu:

"December 7, 2004"

skillz

Older than that

[wasted]

On Slashdot October 25th 2004 from a different source.

Re:Training

[TheOtherShoe]

There is some more information about how they trained the brain cells in this article: http://www.worldhealth.net/p/394,6110.html. From the article,

But how do the neurons learn how to fly the thing? That's done by electrical pulses into the dish through one of the electrodes. That in effect tells the neurons when they are doing the right thing to keep the plane on course. High frequency, or rapid pulses, stimulate the neurons and enhance the connections between them.

Simply put, by stimulating the neurons the researchers tell them they're on the right track, so they continue to adjust the plane's elevator to keep it from plunging toward the ground during a downdraft, for example. When the plane levels off, the simulator reduces the frequency of the pulses, and the neurons back off from that control surface, allowing the plane to remain on course.

After just a few minutes of that kind of training, the "brain" takes over completely, sending signals to the plane's control surfaces, and using feedback from the simulator to know just which signals to send.

As I understand it, one or more of the electrodes function as correctness feedback for the brain cells. These electrodes become more active when the simulated plane is flying level and in the right direction. More activation in these electrodes causes more activation among the brain cells, and when activation is higher the brain cells form stronger connections. So when the brain cells are doing what they are supposed to their behavior is reinforced.

Re:Yet annother RPG plot prediction comes true

[psaindon]

Still waiting on: Use of non-lethal biological weapons to skew election campaigns (by lacing salads at restaurants frequented by campaign volunters with salmonela, e. coli, or influenza)... From Wikipedia: 1984 Rajneeshee salmonella attack In the small town of The Dalles, Oregon, followers of the Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh (the Rajneeshee Cult) attempted to control a local election by infecting salad bars with salmonella. The attack caused about 900 people to get sick. It is considered the first ever bioterrorism case in US history. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_weapon

Re:Next step...

[multipartmixed]

Right-CTRL, Right-ALT, non-numeric delete.

The three-fingered salute only requires three fingers, y'know.