Gordon, a robot controlled exclusively by rat living brain tissue



Gordon is a robot that instead of a normal embedded controller has a brain composed of 50,000 to 100,000 active neurons. A MEA (multi-electrode array) serves as the interface between living tissue and the robot, it feeds sensor information (environment monitor) into the brain and transports control signals out of the brain to the motors.

The living tissue must be kept in a special temperature-controlled unit, filled by antibiotics, that communicates with the robot through Bluetooth. There is no additional control from a human or a computer. Within about 24 hours the neurons and the robot start making connections.

The researchers at University of Reading that have developed Gordon say it is helping explore the boundary between natural and artificial intelligence.

The scientists are now looking at how to teach the robot to behave in certain ways, based on Gordon's ability to learns by itself.

Mainly for ethical reasons, it is unlikely that researchers at Reading or the handful of laboratories around the world exploring the same terrain will be using human neurons any time soon in the same kind of experiments.

But rats brain cells are not a bad stand-in: much of the difference between rodent and human intelligence, speculates Warwick, could be attributed to quantity not quality.

Rats brains are composed of about one million neurons, the specialised cells that relay information across the brain via chemicals called neurotransmitters.

...but humans have 100 billion.