This is amazing, and fucking creepy: "Rise of the rat-brained robots"

[KSRothwell]

The Video: YouTube - Robot with a rat brain

This is no ordinary robot control system - a plain old microchip connected to a circuit board. Instead, the controller nestles inside a small pot containing a pink broth of nutrients and antibiotics. Inside that pot, some 300,000 rat neurons have made - and continue to make - connections with each other.

As they do so, the disembodied neurons are communicating, sending electrical signals to one another just as they do in a living creature. We know this because the network of neurons is connected at the base of the pot to 80 electrodes, and the voltages sparked by the neurons are displayed on a computer screen.

The Article: Rise of the rat-brained robots - tech - 13 August 2008 - New Scientist Tech

Biological machines are an inevitability. And I think it’s pretty God damned amazing, but I can’t help but get a little creeped by the whole thing - think rise if the machiens. It’s not too terribly long before we are bowing down to our new robot masters. Though talking about your new desk top in terms of I.Q. rather then gigabytes might be pretty neat too.

I think the most amazing bit was in the movie clip, the brain cells communicated wirelessly with the robot. How long before we communicate wirelessly with our cars or laptops? Is the next step in our evolution wet-wire implants?

 

[Lapris]

Yeah, I was reading about this earlier on. It's interesting shizzle.

:R:

 

[HarveyJ]

So, who are you with?
The Arm? Or the Core?

How cool is the stuff you get from the RSS from New Scientist?
But yeah, this is kinda old hat news now if you really think about it. They've been using wetware with some success for a while now.
My favourite story of cyborg tech is the monkey that can control the robot arm with its brain: Monkey's brain signals control 'third arm' - 13 October 2003 - New Scientist
YouTube - Monkey With Robot Arm

Oh, and check out the bio-mechanoid artist Stellarc.

 

[fm1234]

Yeah, I remember this from a few years ago too -- they had a rat brain robot trained to work a flight simulator. "What can possibly go wrong?"


Frank

 

[ArtDeco]

Evolution

My cousin ( a psych PHD) spent his life recording brain functions of rats running through mazes. When he retired I asked about what he would publish now, and he said something about ' a few years from now, when enhanced rats run experiments on humans running through mazes ...'. He quit publishing and spends his time running white water rapids and playing with his grandkids.

 

[Janaic]

Some asshole is going to create a movie where the lab rats escape and start to feed on human flesh. This movie will replace the zombie and vampire movies. Watch you'll see.


On a different note, this is very interesting but I would have to agree that it is creepy.

 

[HarveyJ]

I've been mulling this over a little and thinking that perhaps people interested in this stuff should look into the original Ghost in the Shell graphic novel by Masamune Shirow, and a lot of the commentary on it by the academic circles. There's some really interesting commentary by leading Japanese roboticists on the actual viability of a lot of his fiction.

 

[izzamaney]

so... if a robot acts like a person, feels like a person, thinks like a person... does that make the robot a person?