Science Daily October 26, 2021
Researchers in Japan have taught a robot to navigate through a maze by electrically stimulating a culture of brain nerve cells connected to the machine. The neurons were grown from living cells and acted as the physical reservoir for the computer to construct coherent signals. The signals are regarded as homeostatic signals, telling the robot the internal environment was being maintained within a certain range and acting as a baseline as it moved freely through the maze. Throughout trials, the robot was continually fed the homeostatic signals interrupted by the disturbance signals until it had successfully solved the maze task. These findings suggest goal-directed behavior can be generated without any additional learning by sending disturbance signals to an embodied system. The researchers showed intelligent task-solving abilities can be produced using physical reservoir computers to extract chaotic neuronal signals and deliver homeostatic or disturbance signals. In doing so, the computer creates a reservoir that understands how to solve the task…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLEÂ
Schematic of the experimental system for physical reservoir computing (PRC) using a living neuronal culture. .. Credit: Applied Physics Letters, Volume 119, Issue 17, 26 October 2021Â