SCIENCEEEE from August but w/e

[blasphemusfish]

Rat Brained Robots?"AFTER buttoning up a lab coat, snapping on surgical gloves and spraying them with alcohol, I am deemed sanitary enough to view a robot's control system up close. Without such precautions, any fungal spores on my skin could infect it. "We've had that happen. They just stop working and die off," says Mark Hammond, the system's

Comments

[maeda]

SCIENCE, FUCK YEAH!

[blasphemusfish]

It'll kick your ass and shit on your balls.

[tetrabinary]

AND PEE IN YOUR BUTT

[codestothestars]

okay, maybe i'm too dumb to understand this, but are the brain cells actually controlling the robot? like, are they themselves sensing that it's about to hit a wall, and then making the robot change direction?

[blasphemusfish]

The video mentioned that there are sensors able to detect a wall connected to the cells, which are then left to react and stop the robot/change direction.

[kooshinni]

As far as I understood, the researchers found out that specific clumps of brain cells respond to a certain voltage from the robot's inbuilt ultrasound sensors/electrodes when ultrasound signals bounce off a close obstacle (eg. wall). So it's not really the brain cells controlling the motion - they're just reacting to voltages created by the ultrasound echoes, but the voltage they generate in response makes the robot turn

[blasphemusfish]

I put it way more retardedly :D

[kooshinni]

I sometimes wonder whether scientists say "it'll help us find out more about Alzheimer's/Parkinson's/etc." just so they can get funding while secretly building an army of biological robot minions.

Either way, this is quite interesting.

[smaps]

And that was precisely my first thought, hah. (:

[pheara]

As a scientist, I can say "yeah, pretty much"
But this work could indeed be helpful in neural regeneration someday, which could help with all kinds of things.

[kintotech]

Win for both this comment and its parent.

[vandigo]

I saw something about this kind of thing on TV a while back . . . they had a small dish full and it was flying a jet in a flight simulator program.

[residualvisuals]

Yeah, I read that online. They said they were hoping it might eventually help solve neurological problems like epilepsy, which would be awesome for me. Unfortunately it probably won't happen in my lifetime, and if it does I'll probably be too old to give a crap.

[vandigo]

Yeah. D.

[pahraydolliah]

Fuck, that is awesome. Seeing shit like this gets me excited, not because of what we could eventually cure, but because it is just so goddamned cool.