in the news.. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,403744,00.html if they give it a laser. I'm outta here... p.s. this could mean the end of the kitten thread.
a more detailed serious artical here. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19926696.100-rise-of-the-ratbrained-robots.html lol, title of article "Rise of the Rat Brained Robots"
Pdog has a brain now? when did this happen? damn the scientist working on robots when there are perfectly good XOO members who could use the help first. curses
Not that there aren't plenty of rats to go around, but I hope these guys learn something that can be applied to real world problems sometime in the near future - they mention Alzheimer's a few times, but that's almost always given as an example of what further information about brain function could help treat. I could elaborate on why, but I will try to keep this brief. I fully understand and appreciate rats and other lab animals being used to further our understanding of medicine and science in general; it's when the applications seem unreasonable (i.e. animal testing of cosmetic products) that I get upset. This project could go either way, and I am looking forward to hearing more information about their discoveries of the functionality of neuron network linking/development. But uhh, I guess robots would be cool too. ...? This didn't sound very practical to me because the "brains" had to be so carefully handled, and each had to be individually trained and calibrated for (and were stored in a separate containment unit remote from the robot itself). But I've always been a lot more interested in biochemistry than mechanical engineering, so I will admit my bias there - my views are pretty limited when it comes to predicting future applications of mechanical things. At any rate, thanks for bringing attention to the article, it was an interesting read
but why at the University of Reading....shouldnt they i dunno....be writing the report on some other university doing this project? also lol at the "brain-in-a-dish" comment