Slashdot Mirror
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."
A rat that can smart-bomb your rat-trap.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Rodent brains may seem small, but think of where we can go if we can ramp this technology... One day we may have humans flying planes!
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
Given this news, I can only imagine what the next round of layoffs at American Airlines will bring...
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
What do you know - it's a triple!
At least it's 2 months old this time and not still on the main page...
All they said was that they hooked it up to electrodes and a computer to train the brain cells to fly the plane in simulator. Is this basically the same as training an artificial neural network or is there some more complicated biological factors involved than the just shocking the cells when they veer off course?
english is way to easy
Ultra-intelligent spam filters. //yay!
This is great until there is a big "Rat Flu" outbreak. Brings a new meaning to computer virus
oh never mind
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Now people aren't even bothering to camouflage it when they troll Slashdot by taking advantage of the laughable editorial standards.
Todays date: Dec 6, 2005
Article date: Dec 6/7, 2004 (7 in the text, 6 in the URL)
So, I'm guessing we'll be seeing a few dupes of this (though I'm sure it was on Slashdot last year too, so technically it's already a dupe), followed up by someone fooling the editors into posting a blatent advertisement or an update on the number of FireFox downloads.
...in level flight. It's landing a plane that poses a bit more of a challenge.
... already has a mouse. Next story?
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
I think it's significant that they chose a flight simulator instead of a more traditional "game" to teach the newly formed brain.
Here's a couple of points to remember:
The difference between the makeup, function, and behavior of a given type of cells between one species and another is so insignificant (remember, we're talking on a cellular level) that they can generally be ignored. You can almost always assume that a given cell type in one organism will behave identically to a parallel cell in another. The species that the cell came from is all but insignificant.
Brain cells, (in humans and in other species) are amazingly versatile. While capable of specializing (vision centers, speech centers, etc.), these cells seem to be capable of taking on any function necessary for the benefit of the organism. For example, humans brains in which a specific part has been damaged (such as the vision center) have actually re-mapped other cell groups to take over that function. They do what they have to to survive.
Brain cells are cooperative in nature: if placed in proximity to eachother, they'll work together for their common good (read: survival). They'll "instinctively" form a structure similar to how they're pre-designed to work. They'll form a brain--as fully functional as the situation permits. It doesn't necessarily matter how you arrange them, the brain cells can sort those details out--somehow.
Brains look for order. We've known that for ages. Finding order is how a brain learns, it's how the brain separates relevant details from the background noise. The ability to identify order is the whole basis of intelligence. Every sense, every stimulus, every aspect of the brain has order-seeking overtones. This feature of brains is so absolutely universal that it must be deeply ingrained into the neurons themselves.
Put those details together, and you end up with the following scenario: if you take neurons out of an organism and place them together, they'll form a brain. Probably not as complex or capable a brain as you started with, but a brain none the less. Actually this is the ideal brain to study, as you're starting "from scratch": there's no evolutionary specialization involved. Each cell will attempt to make sense of its neighbors, and as a result, the organism as a whole will attempt to make sense of its environment (brain processes are the ultimate in emergent algorithms). The brain will follow this behavior as if it were necessary to the brain's survival.
Which brings us to the flight simulator. If you instead had the brain play with a chessboard or a clock, the results would probably be unimpressive. But a flight simulator--that's really the perfect environment. There's the potential for the brain to actually order its environment: there are equilibrium points that the brain will eventually find where it has greater control over its inputs. Assuming that flying too hight or too low creates a more chaotic state, you can likely expect the brain to learn to avoid it.
In fact, I'd be very much surprised if you didn't actually see the brain cells start to specialize. Some cells will become responsibe for directly manipulating the flight controls based on the inputs from the brain. Some will attempt to maintain aircraft equilibrium in absence of any other input from the brain. Others will control the aircraft as a whole, their location in the network giving them a better overall picture of the situation than, say, the cells near the controls. Furthermore, I fully expect some cells to not participate at all: cells that are "out of the loop", so to speak, will proably cease most activity to avoid disturbing the overall process.
I, personally, have been waiting to see this very experiment conducted and see the results. I think this is very exciting science
Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons are next.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
Great. Not only are they immortal and fearless - now they can fly fighter jets too.
What could possibly go wrong?
This isnt news, John Travolta has been flying planes for years...
Ratty Brainee Flee Planee
1! 2! 3! 4!
Ratty Brainee Flee Planee
1! 2! 3! 4!
Rodent wants a black helicopter
Hover the sticky paper
Raiding the larder
Ratty Brainee Flee Planee
1! 2! 3! 4!
I want be one
You want to have some
With little a 'dungee
They've gone past the bungee
Ratty Brainee Flee Planee
1! 2! 3! 4!
did you read the article at newscientist.com about rats singing (actually mice, but the author claims that his rat was a diva)....i get it in print, but it's now online - at newscientst, search for the article "romantic rodents"..."Tim Holy and Zhongsheng Guo of Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, Missouri, recorded the vocalisations of male mice when they were presented with female pheromones and found they were far more complex than expected." and of course, rats are much more complicated creatures, right? have you seen the crispin glover remake of willard?
enjoy life, and Gmail.pro
...a culture of rat brain cells which can detect year-old dupes on /. Now that would be both news _and_ considerable progress over the current method, which is most likely a culture of Cowboy Neal's brain cells in dire need of a vacation, a blonde and a bottle of diet Coke.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
I want my neural-integrated real-time WWII Shooter!
Alright, while games would be great, just think of the possibilities of a truly human-machine integration. Your mind able to drift from place to place running on whatever hardware's free weather its you dual-processor dog, your Supercomputer Blackberry, or your tricked out, modded up home base in your skull.
We'd need to understand the complicated nature of the brain if humanity is to continue to grow. Machines are already a vital part of many human beings' lives on this planet, one day machines may no longer be something separate but a part of us, no different than our nervous system or our skin. Things like this are the first step to really freeing the mind.
Demented But Determined.
I read a sci-fi book about these neural networks many years ago. It featured a computer, with a rat brain, that simulated weather changes, or something like that. It wasn't powerful enough, and the plot involved a scientist turning to a human brain and all the ramifications etc... Does anyone rememeber that book (or something like it, my memory of it is pretty fuzzy).
I just type my sig in the reply form...
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.
no wonder I thought this was deja-vu:
"December 7, 2004"
skillz
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
Maybe a cluster can fly the space shuttle?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
It's walking away from a landing thats the goal.
Or in this case, carried off in your petri dish.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Since the original posting the rat has got pretty old.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
On Slashdot October 25th 2004 from a different source.
I'm not saying the F-22 can "fly itself" but the latest generations of fighter planes have been increasingly geared toward reducing the complexity of flight. Get these rat brains to fly twin engine propeller planes with simple/no computers and it'll be noteworthy.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
In the original article I read last year some time, [I didn't RTFdupe] the rat brain managed to handle relatively complex things like wind shear etc.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Interesting comment, since such a culture of cells would have no immune system. There is also the issue of having to feed the cells somehow, which makes it unlikely that this could be implemented without human oversight (i.e. computers couldn't just be left to run like they can now).
My other sig is funny.
In other news...
Slashdot has opensourced a way to use pidgeon brains to run news portals.
...in level flight. It's landing a plane that poses a bit more of a challenge.
Dr. Henry Jones: "Junior, I didn't know you could fly a plane!"
Indy: "Fly? Yes! Land? NO!"
(Ah... memories)
Read the November article you linked to, and found this gem in the comments...
It is a solemn thought: dead, the noblest man's meat is inferior to pork.
Every plane lands eventually. Landing is mandatory :)
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
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
I'm curious what the rat brain was actually controlling. An F-22 is inherently unstable without computer control (normal planes have a tendency to re-equilibrate to level flight, whereas an F-22 has a tendency to fall out of the sky). Was the rat brain subsituting for computer control? or was it just providing direcional input like a normal fighter pilot would? F-22s can literally fly themselves. Slapping a rat brain on top doesn't exactly make that better.
I'm failing to understand why it makes any sense to make a biologically-based self-levelling system when you can accomplish the same function with fully mechanical systems. If you add computers, you don't even need humans for the majority of the flight. Why put a rat brain on a plane if good aerodynamic design will accomplish the same purpose? Any relatively modern plane (as in the last 50 years) will tend to stay level on all axes if properly trimmed.
Start to worry once it learns quake 3...
Myself, I always say let Bhagwans be Bhagwans.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.