Darwin VII Robot Has 20,000 Brain Cells

New Scientist is reporting on a robot, Darwin VII, that has 20,000 brain cells and actually learns!

Researchers at the Neurosciences Institute (NSI) in La Jolla, California have developed ‘Darwin VII’, a trashcan shaped robot that has 20,000 brain cells. The Darwin VII Robot operates on biological principles and without any pre-specified instructions. Essentially, it ‘thinks’ for itself and learns and acts/reacts to it’s enviroment without being pre-programmed to do so.

Darwin crawls across a floor strewn with blocks, grabbing and tasting the blocks as it goes, its malleable mind is impressionable and hungry to learn, reports the guys over at ‘New Scientist’. It is already adapting, discovering that the striped blocks are yummy and the spotted ones taste bad, the report said. Its exploration is driven by instincts: an interest in bright objects, a predilection for tasting things, and an innate notion of what tastes good.

Darwin VII consists of a mobile base equipped with a CCD camera for vision, microphones for hearing, conductivity sensors for taste, and effectors for movement of its base, of its head, and of a gripping manipulator, university researchers Jeffrey Krichmar Gerald and M Edelman said in the report.

The only pic I could find of the Darwin VII robot is this black and white one found in a 2003 PDF entitled: Brain-Based Devices: Intelligent Systems Based on Principles of the Nervous System.

If anyone has a link to a video of Darwin VII in action, I’d love to see it.

[Source: Neurosciences Institute Via: New Scientist]