Robot with biological brain

Meet Gordon, the worlds first robot controlled entirely with living brain tissue, the primitive grey matter was designed at the University of Reading just been put through its paces.

Stitched together from cultured rat neurons the purpose of the exercise is to figure out how memories are stored in the brain.

Kevin Warwick, professor at the University of Reading and one of the robot’s principle architects see’s practical medical purposes in the “frankenbrain”, “Observing how the nerve cells cohere into a network as they fire off electrical impulses may help scientists combat diseases that attack the brain such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s”.

Gordon has a brain composed of 50,000 to 100,000 active neurons which once removed from rat foetuses and disentangled from each other with an enzyme bath are laid out in a nutrient-rich surface across an array of electrodes.

This “multi-electrode array” or (MEA) serves as the interface between the living tissue and machine.

The brain then starts to send electrical impulses to get the robots wheels moving and impulses arrive back at the brain from sensors which react to their environment.

As the brain is living tissue it must be housed in a special temperature-controlled unit and communicates with the bosy over Bluetooth.

“Within around 24 hours the neurons are getting busy and start sending out feelers to each other and making connections,” said Warwick. “Within a week we get some spontaneous firings and brain-like activity, similar to what happens in a normal rat brain, now we are looking at how best to teach it to behave in certain ways.”

Gordon is learning by himself to a degree already, when he hits a solid surface a current is sent to his brain so the memory will pick up this consequence and learn by habit.

Via AFP

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