Adaere's Journal: Rat-Brained Robots

Well, now that grabbed your attention with that catchy subject line :)

I went to Georgia Tech a couple of weeks ago to see Dr. Steve Potter lecture on animats

Basically, what he's doing is taking some mouse embryo neurons, growing them in a petri dish which is attached to an array of electrodes embedded in a computer chip, then using the signals from the neurons to operate a virtual mouse in a computer simulation, as well as a tiny wheeled robot. His purpose is to study the neurons and try to find out how they work; the robots are more of a thing to show people that is physical. They're also working with a larger robot (with Linux inside) which will actually house the neurons and be able to roll around in the real world. More later.