Rats are the next model for robots. Imagine a very large mechanical rodent scurrying around the room and you get the idea. Not for the faint of heart if you hate rats. Probably won't be the design for the next generation of robotic vacuum cleaners, but the behavior may be just what is needed to bring some intelligence to robots. The intelligence of a rat.
Researchers have gone to nature yet again to find inspiration for robot development. On robotNext there have been posts on snake bots, insect bots, beaver-tailed bots, and dinosaur bots. Robots have been modeled on spiders, water striders, and even humans. Why not rats?
Actually, why rats? Rats have brain structures similar to humans, so rats make sense as a model. Roboticists in this article from physorg.com believe that robots modeled on rats may be able to accomplish some basic, but useful behaviors, such as navigating around objects or searching for food. If robots could learn to do this, they would become more than a programmed machine to do repetitive tasks.
Check out the article at the links below.
Agnes Guillot dreams of one day seeing a giant 50-centimetre (20-inch) -long white rat called Psikharpax scuttling fearlessly around her lab.
... the smarts to figure out dangers and opportunities, a robot is helpless without human intervention. "The autonomy of robots today is similar to that of an insect," snorts Guillot, a researcher at France's Institute for Intelligent Systems and ...
The future of robots is rat-shaped
Sun, 07 Jun 2009 15:10:50 GMT
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