There have been plenty of bizarre robots designed in the past, but this could well take the top spot. In a world first, this robot is more human than ever, kitted out with and controlled by a real-life brain.
Research teams from Tianjin University and Southern University of Science and Technology have controlled the tracking, grasping and obstacle avoidance of a robot via what is known as a ‘mini-brain’.
This, of course, isn’t a real brain pulled from a human body. Cultured in vitro, these brains are created for the purpose of research – and, apparently, for integration into robots.
To control the robot, the researchers used the organism to make a so-called 'brain-on-chip'. While the brain has some of the intelligent functions of a biological brain, it needs a bit of assistance.
The chip is added to the brain to allow the scientists to debug it, send signals to the outside world and thereby achieve specific functions, such as controlling the robot’s grabbing ability.
"The brain-computer interface on a chip is a technology that uses an in vitro cultured 'brain' (such as brain organoids) coupled with an electrode chip to achieve information interaction with the outside world through encoding and decoding and stimulation-feedback," said Prof Ming Dong, vice president of Tianjin University.
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Through the use of the chip, the brain can learn to control the robot, figure out the movements, avoid obstacles, track targets and learn how to move the arms.
Because the robot can’t see like we do, the brain is interpreting the world through electrical signals provided to it by the chip. It could, in theory, train itself to fully navigate a simulated environment, but understanding the real world is more complicated.
This brain-on-chip was developed as an open-source project and has been given the name MetaBOC. Mini brains are most often used for experimentation, but this isn’t the first time they’ve found their way into a robot.
Back in 2018, researchers created a mini-brain from the DNA of fossilised bones. By using this technique they were able to create a brain from samples of a Neanderthal. These samples were, somewhat creepily, then put into a spider-like robot to control it.
The team behind this latest robot-brain interaction believes two key breakthroughs from this study help it stand out compared to previous research.
Firstly, they are using ball-shaped organoids. This means the cell culture has moved from two-dimensional to three-dimensional, providing a more complex neural network for the brain-on-chip to operate on.
To achieve this, the mini-brains are grown under low-intensity focused ultrasound stimulation. The team has stated that this gave them a better intelligent foundation to build on.
Secondly, the addition of artificial intelligence algorithms has helped realise the technology, offering the robot more abilities from the mini-brain.
While all of this may sound unbelievable, there is still a long way to go. For instance, the brain inside the robot's helmet is currently just a mock-up, with the actual brain tissue kept separate for testing purposes.
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