Rat brain cells control remote robot artist

July 9, 2003 | Source: KurzweilAI

U.S. and Australian researchers have created what they call a new class of creative beings, “the semi-living artist” — a picture-drawing robot in Perth, Australia whose movements are controlled by the brain signals of cultured rat cells in Atlanta.

The team hopes to bridge the gap between biological and artificial systems to produce a machine capable of matching the intelligence of the simplest organism.

Gripping three colored markers positioned above a white canvas, the robotic drawing arm operates based on the neural activity of a few thousand rat neurons placed in a special petri dish that keeps the cells alive. The dish, a Multi-Electrode Array (MEA), is instrumented with 60 two-way electrodes for communication between the neurons and external electronics. The neural signals are recorded and sent to a computer that translates neural activity into robotic movement.

The network of brain cells, located in Professor Steve Potter’s lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, and the mechanical arm, located in the lab of Guy Ben-Ary at the University of Western Australia in Perth, interact in real-time through a data exchange system via an Internet connection between the robot and the brain cells.

Over time, the teams will be able to establish a cultured in vitro network system that learns like the living brains in people and animals do. To achieve that, the information from the robot’s sensors is sent back through the system to the cultured network of cells in the form of electrical stimuli. By closing the loop, the group hopes the robot will learn something about itself and its environment.

Georgia Institute of Technology press release