Robot with simulated rat brain thinks it’s a rodent

Washington : A robot controlled by a simulated rat brain has been able to mimic rodent behaviour in series of classic animal experiments.

Alfredo Weitzenfeld, a roboticist at the ITAM technical institute in Mexico City, carried out the work by reprogramming an AIBO robot dog, made by Japanese firm Sony, with the rat-inspired control software.

Weitzenfeld found that the robot could recognise places it had already visited, distinguish between locations that looked alike, and figure out roughly where it was when placed in an unfamiliar part of a maze, after just a single training session.

The robot's tasks were set up to replicate Richard Morris' classic water maze experiments from the 1980s. These were designed to shed light on how spatial problems are solved neurologically.

Weitzenfeld is also working closely with neuroscientists who are experimenting with real rats.

One of the challenges in robot navigation is to enable machines to create maps of their surrounding environment, while working out their location at the same time – a challenge known as simultaneous localisation and mapping or SLAM

According to Chris Melhuish, director of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, experiments in simulation in real environments could make a big difference when it comes to making more robust control software for robots. (ANI)