Slashdot Mirror
Robot Controlled By Rat Brain
kkleiner writes "Kevin Warwick, once a cyborg and still a researcher in cybernetics at the University of Reading, has been working on creating biological neural networks that can control machines. He and his team have taken the brain cells from rats, cultured them, and used them as the guidance control circuit for simple wheeled robots. Electrical impulses from the bot enter the batch of neurons, and responses from the cells are turned into commands for the device. The cells can form new connections, making the system a true learning machine."
to greet our new rat overlords.
Way to creep me the fuck out, slashdot.
On the bright side, when the robot apocalypse comes, no one will be blaming the computer programmers. They'll just track down these guys and ask them, "I know you were working really hard, but how did you never catch an episode of Battlestar Galactica?!"
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
"The same thing we do every day, Pinky, try to take over the world!"
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Well, not really, but it is as close as she is going to get on any subject.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/09/odonnell-in-2007-scientists-have-created-mice-with-human-brains.php
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Which I guess is one step closer to a rat brain being controlled by a robot...
Brain cells, and an entire brain (especially a mammal's) are two separate beasts.
If it uses living cells from a rat brain, then it's not really a machine.
"Separate beasts" is a bit of a muddled metaphor in this instance.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
What doesn't seem too clear after listening to the videos is why the rat's cells wouldn't want to crash the robot it's controlling, into the wall. Did the scientists program that in (perhaps wall crashes give the cells some kind of negative electrical stimulation), or did the cells have a mind of its own on that front?
The difference is subtle because it means we have either a 'mere' replacement for computer chips, or potentially much more - a sentient clump of cells which want the 'best' for the robot it's controlling.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
hey it'll work....
Say I have a terminal illness. It some of my brain cells can be kept alive, and given a robot body to motor around in, maybe its worth a go.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
It wont pass the ARSENIC (Association of Robot-Society Engineered Non-Intentional Characteristics) approval test. It appears it cannot be controlled or predicted, and is at risk of harming humans and live beings in general. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Oh noes! This is the genesis of the Daleks! Right here in River City! The Dr. will be so disappointed in his favorite Brits.
*Cackles Maniacally*
Now go, my ratbots. Go and wheel your way into the glorious future, heralding humanity's DOOM!
*More Evil Laughter*
And in other news - Reading town council announced they have changed their name to ............. CAPRICA
Rat brain cells are not going to strike the right chord with people. I would use brain cells from an animal people are familiar with, and trust, like horses, cats, dogs, monkeys, or cattle.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Guy Ben-Ary is an artist who did a residency at the SymbioticA Research Lab at the University of Western Australia and then at the Potter Lab at Georgia Tech. During that time he created a system where a culture of rat brain neurons controlled a robotic pen controller to draw "art". Further, the two components (brain and arm) were geographically separated and communicated across the internet.
MEART: The Semi Living Artist
http://web.mit.edu/shkolnik/www/meart/
http://www.fishandchips.uwa.edu.au/
One simple rule for its versus it's
Here's a rat cyborg who used to be our overlord. As to cyborgs, Warwick was never a cyborg. Implanting a chip that does nothing whatever doesn't make you a cyborg, but a pacemaker does. To be a cyborg you have to have a device implanted in your body that aids in the body's function; a pacemaker, an artificial hip or knee, a cochlear implant, an accomodating IOL, etc. Implanting a chip that does nothing is just stupid.
Your grandma's probably a real cyborg.
Free Martian Whores!
Kevin Warwick, once a cyborg and still a researcher in cybernetics at the University of Reading
Wait, he used to be a cyborg and then decided a change of career was in order?!
It's Bicentennial Man all over again...
Summation 2
I'll be more worried when they make a ratbird cyborg.
New, Different Rat-Brained Robot from 2002?
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
Am I the only impression that the people who write for (and read) SingularityHub are either clueless attention whores like Jon Katz, or basement-dwelling nerds with a tenuous grip on reality (at best) fapping off to science fiction?
Brain cells, and an entire brain (especially a mammal's) are two separate beasts.
That's what I thought. When reading the title one would understand that they removed rat brains and inserted them in a robot and still managed to keep them partially functioning, but in reality they just took some nervous cells from rat brains, cultivated them and then used those. Not even remotely the same thing. A brain controls quite a lot of things, has insane parallel computing capabilities, memory, reasoning capabilities and so on and so forth, but a network of nervous cells cultivated in laboratory environment of this scale is more-or-less just a device that does what it's told to do..
I know I should already be used to seeing idiotic and completely wrong titles in Slashdot news but gee, do people do that on purpose or why they seem to never actually learn anything?
on slashdot. Wasn't it just essentially some cells that had been jury rigged to produce behavior that look intelligent?
Warwick was never a cyborg.
Does controlling a mechanical hand count? Or communicating electronically (however primitive)? And that's what he was up to in 2002.
A pacemaker doesn't make you a cyborg.
Instead, if it's under your control, or connected to your nervous system to feed information, that would make you a cyborg.
The SkyNet funding bill is passed.
The system goes online on August 4th, 2017.
Human decisions are removed from strategic defense.
SkyNet begins to learn at a geometric rate.
It becomes self-aware at 2:14am Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
And, Skynet fights back...and goes for the cheese.
I have to return some videotapes...
That's also what he got after 4 years of calling himself a cyborg and giving lectures on cyborg rights for having nothing more than a RFID chip under the skin. The one that actually interfaces with the nerves is also someone else's design.
But the GP criticism IMHO still stands. There are people with more useful implants than Captain Cyborg, and more fitting the cyborg meaning, and some from long before him. The first pacemaker was implanted in 1960, though the first research into that started at the end of the 19'th century. That's a mix of biological and machine right there and it's from before waay before Warwick's PR stunts.
And in the meantime we have stuff that's even better. E.g., CCD retina replacements interface with nerves too and do something more useful than Warwick's chip.
Heck, studies in interfacing with neurons or sometimes directly with the brain have been happening since 1970. In 1999 someone managed to reproduce images seen by a cat, and in 2000 someone did exactly the trick of replicating arm movements for a monkey. That's actual neural interfacing research from the time when Captain Cyborg had just a RFID chip. His subsequent basically getting a similar chip to that in said monkey implanted in himself makes him at most an early human test subject, but nothing more than that.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I looked at the videos, but mostly what I saw was a robot semi-randomly driving around. Did they do some kind of experiment to prove they had done something more than set loose a stochastic system with wheels? I tried to follow up on some of the references, but after the second not-so-reputable journal with some kind of barrier to entry, I gave up. If I had done experiments in this vein, I would be yelling as loudly as possible about what tests I did to ensure this actually proves something. You know, so people wouldn't think I was just a crack-pot looking for attention. Doesn't help either that this is the same douche-bag that stuck a chip in his arm and claimed he was a "cyborg". In addition to not feeding trolls, can we avoid feeding media whores in future too?
"But are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
Now we have a viable alternative for politicians.
(And they can make their own robo-calls too! :-)
to suggest they don't let the robot get a whiff of some dudes cheese lunch.....it could go ape shit!
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
Actually I think one is a subset of of the other... beast.
If you want to take this to it's logical conclusion, this is the book to read.. Must've read this book 20 times.
I'm not sure an artificial hip/knee would make you a cyborg -- otherwise, a pegleg would also make you a cyborg.
I think the hip/knee seem too passive to be cybrenetic -- there's no sensors or anything beyond purely "mechanical" things; I think you'd need some more sensors or "active" technology. But, hey, I could be massively wrong -- even reading the wikipedia article I'm not sure I really get it.
But, hey, my mom has an artificial knee, and is slated to get another one soon. If my mom is a cyborg, that would be friggin' awesome!!
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
But they were mice, not rats! Troz!
The rat bastard!
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
It has also been done the other way around. Live rats can be remotely controlled by humans, using signals sent to an implant in the rat's brain.
When the scientist wants the rat to turn one way or the other, he/she sends a signal that makes the rat feel like one of its whiskers has been twitched, and the rat turns on command.
Paid Q&A/Research
Great, now when the terminators come we just have to find the rats that control skynet.
I think this rat brain thing is old news. Here's a nice documentary about Warwick on Motherboard.tv: http://www.motherboard.tv/2010/8/10/the-cyborg-kevin-warwick-is-the-world-s-first-human-robot-hybrid His wife has also been implanted; they were the first humans to communicate directly through their nervous systems.
Just keep it away from my drywall!
RoboCop: Serve the public trust, protect the innocent, uphold the law.
Recycling is good, unless it's news... This is an old story: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/08/08/13/1827215/Rat-Brained-Robots-Take-Their-First-Steps
I dont see anything wrong with using brain tissue from any animal even a human. Afterall its the WHOLE of the brain that makes us what we are and gives us our soul. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Biotechnology is definately a big part of the future. Why not fuse neurons with silicon and get the best of both worlds. Neurons make for far better learning systems than solid technology. The brain learns because the neurons move around.
Here in the Netherlands we have this technology as far back as the 1950s. Hell, our whole government is composed of robots with rat brains.
The vids on the site where put on youtube in 2008.... Could this be a hoax?
So he uses cell cultures as controllers for robots. I don't have access to his article now to see what he did exactly, but I doubt he can make this work efficiently.
I remember a talk about some DARPA projects after 9/11 for chemical sensing that used also alive cell cultures. Advanced chemical sensing could serve to detect explosives and chemical weapons and therefore shield again terrorist attacks. They would take a cell culture from a rat brain put it onto a dish and then characterize the responses to different kinds of currents (output from chemical sensors), so they could implement a computational model that separated these responses and made sense of them. The problem they had was that the cultures are difficult to maintain in the same state. For chemical sensing they had to be transported which was problematic, because even slight jerks would change the culture. They are very sensitive to temperature and then of course they change over time (as the introduction states). So, the would have to be adjusted again, which is time consuming and expensive. Until he finds a way to maintain the state of the network and control the intrinsic changes of the network (culture) he will have problems with stability and it will not be very useful.
It seems like we've seen this already. Somewhere.....
My manager has been controlled by a rat brain for years...
A peg leg's not implanted; it's strapped on (My late uncle made such prosthetics). And yes, your mom's a cyborg! So am I; the lens in my left eye has been replaced by an artificial lens on struts; a device that cured my extreme myopia, age related presbyopia, and stroid induced cataract.
You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile!
Free Martian Whores!
"Robot Controlled By A Rat Brain"
Glenn Beck
Rush Limbaugh
Dubbyah
Katie Couric
Steve Balmer
RIAA
New boss same as the old boss?
But... the future refused to change.
I would think a story about a robot controlled by a rat brain would bring up all kinds of jabbing.
It's too bad the article is so scant on details and so full of fanboyism. I would very much like to see the circuit diagrams and control system diagrams for this supposed neural control network. Kevin Warwick, if I remember correctly, has a history of making very bold claims and announcing certain successes that don't quite live up to his descriptions when viewed critically...or for that matter when viewed at all. Supposedly, he is using a feedback control system involving these neural cells to force some kind of output. I'd like to see that control scheme. Are the neurons part of the plant or part of the state estimator? Is he controlling rates, position, accelerations, or some combination therein? Are the state variables (velocity, acceleration, whatever) fed back into the neural network and compared against a predicted or commanded state? He is claiming to have developed a neuron based control system but there are absolutely no details about the control system itself so I am very wary of this claim.
So far as I know, the only thing a neuron, or batch of neurons, can do is process an electrical signal from one end to another. If that's the case I fail to see how these neurons are controlling anything. I don't see how they could be used to calculate or predict any state at all. If all they are doing is transferring the analog signal from a batch of sensors, and then delivering those signals to a microcontroller or something, then they are not controlling the system at all, they are simply acting as biological wires. If they are rerouting sensory signals to various parts of the circuit based on level of input, that would be something worth noting, but I am not sure how a batch of neurons could do that. Furthermore, Rodney Brookes was able to do pretty much the same thing with transistor sets and analog sensors years ago when he developed his robotic bug brain...so it's not like such a control scheme hasn't been cooked up before. It would be great to see the details of the work to know what Warwick is actually up to this time, but I have a sneaking suspicion that his neural controller is nothing more than a classic analog or digital controller that uses a batch of neurons to transfer signals in the exact same manner that wires or a transistor bank could do. I want details.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
So, what with the rat neurons being permitted to create their own connections, can we safely say that in the event of robot apocalypse, the first strike targets will be dairy farms and cheese factories? The robots won't be able to do anything with it, but will be drawn to it for some reason they can't explain.
Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
What about a glass eye? What about a dental appliance that is screwed into your jawbone? Would a steel plate in your head make you a cyborg?
I'm just trying to figure out the specifics of what makes you a cyborg here. Merely having something implanted vs strapped on can't be good enough. Anybody with pins or screws would be a cyborg, and I'm not convinced of that.
Part of me thinks the interface between you and the device needs to be more ... interactive for lack of a better word. It seems like there should be some flow of information, not merely a static component (and I include bending mechanical stuff as "static" for sake of argument).
In your case, I absolutely agree with the lens -- that's sensors and the like, which sounds more like cyborg to me.
Like anything, there's a continuum of things, with some things being obviously "no" and some things obviously "yes" -- and a bunch of things in the middle which.
I just don't think by virtue of having something implanted, you're a cyborg. As someone pointed out elsewhere in this thread, some guy who had an RFID under his skin wasn't a cyborg since it wasn't hooked up to anything and didn't do anything other than respond to external stimuli -- at that point, it's like the tag cattle have in their ears.
Likewise, for the artificial knee, I really don't know where that falls on that range. Is it a prosthetic, a replacement for a worn out part, or are you a cyborg?
Of course, I'm sure this gets very meta and doesn't really have an easily arrived-at answer. :-P Though, you're probably more of a cyborg than most of us ever will be, so, you've got that going for 'ya.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The dictionary says you're wrong.
Free Martian Whores!
IMO, requirements for a cyborg:
1. It's an implant. It can't be trivially removable, it's a part of yourself like your leg is
2. It's not static. It either affects the rest of the body, or is directly controlled by it.
That is, it's not natural, but it works like a body part and is a part of the body.
Not cyborg: external attachments like peg legs, glasses. Internal static devices like screws and metal plates. A bullet stuck in you doesn't make you a cyborg, so a static chunk of metal or plastic doesn't either, even if it works to your benefit.
Cyborg: implanted artificial hand linked to the nerves, controllable like a body part. Pacemakers. Internal insulin pumps that sense the current concentration and inject as needed. Artificial heart. Circuitry connected to the brain.
Just imagine a Beowulf cluster of these: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Pied_piper.jpg
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
It isn't a learning machine; it's a learning rat brain in a machine. The difference is not subtle.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
The word you're looking for is feedback. I took the course in Cybernetics at Reading and the first year pretty much revolved entirely around feedback systems. The online dictionary definition of cybernetics waffles on and on and fails to mention that feedback is a huge part of it. It sort of sideways behind-your-back refers to it using the term "control", but unless you are an engineer and understand the word "control" the way an engineer does, that vague reference flies right past you.
I can't believe this! We are going to have our first cyborg soon! Replace Laptop LCD Screen
What about a glass eye?
It's neither a device, nor does it aid in the body's function.
What about a dental appliance that is screwed into your jawbone?
If it's a device, then yes. My mother has an IOL, but hers is a monofocal IOL. It aids in the body's function (eyesight) but it's not a device, so she's not a cyborg.
Merely having something implanted vs strapped on can't be good enough.
Correct! If you have a device that aids in the body's function implanted in your body you're a cyborg. If it's not a device, it's not implanted, or it doesn't aid the body's function, then you're not a cyborg.
Part of me thinks the interface between you and the device needs to be more ... interactive for lack of a better word.
I'd say probably yes. A hip joint is certainly interactive or it would be useless. My IOL is interactive; it's controlled by my eye's focusing muscles. A pacemaker tells your heart when to beat.
I just don't think by virtue of having something implanted, you're a cyborg.
Correct.
As someone pointed out elsewhere in this thread, some guy who had an RFID under his skin wasn't a cyborg since it wasn't hooked up to anything and didn't do anything other than respond to external stimuli -- at that point, it's like the tag cattle have in their ears.
That was me that made that comment. Warwick's no cyborg.
Likewise, for the artificial knee, I really don't know where that falls on that range. Is it a prosthetic, a replacement for a worn out part, or are you a cyborg?
An artificial knee is a replacement for a worn out joint (maybe for one damaged by an accident or something as well, I'm not sure).
Though, you're probably more of a cyborg than most of us ever will be
Yeah, I'm a real scince fictiony guy, ain't I? What's more, my daughter Patty found out last year when she got an MRI that she's a mutant; she was born with only one kidney (1 in 1000 people are born with only one kidney). So the mutant's dad is a cyborg!
Plus, a woman that was living with me a couple of years ago was married to an alien!
Well, he wasn't a space alien but still...
Free Martian Whores!
Your grandma's probably a real cyborg.
You think so? I've got to dig that up!
Implanting a chip that does nothing is just stupid.
Is he making any money out of the look-at-him-he's-a-cyborg crowd?
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.