Invertebrates' neurons inform robot brains

BOFFINS DOING ROBOT research have found that special brain impulses, key to the natural rhythms of spiders and lobsters, could aid android movement.

Robots have brains that can beat humans at chess and enough natural language processing to beat us at US quiz show Jeopardy. But when it comes to getting up stairs they still in a primordial robo-fug. Unless your walking robot is sponsored by DARPA with zillions of government wonga spent for its military deployment, you'll have to think again.

That's exactly what a team of  European boffins did in looking for easier ways for robots to move. The team researched the way invertebrates' brains talk to their legs and found that the nerve patterns do inform the movement.

The team then mapped those brain, nerve patterns and mapped them on to modular control systems for robots. Such a method was used so a robot worm could mimic the natural rhythmic undulations of its biological cousin.

The robot boffins call the nerve pulse system central pattern generators (CPGs). The CPGs take care of automated repetitive tasks and generate the rhythmic impulses we rely on to eat and walk.

But Spanish researcher Fernando Herrero discovered that CPGs can be linked together to create much more complex behaviour and used that to create mini CPGs in limbs.

"You can concentrate first on each part of each leg, and design a controller mini-CPG for the ankle, for the knee, the hip and so on," he told the BBC. Indeed the knee CPG is connected to the thigh CPG, the thigh PCG is connected to the hip CPG, and so on. µ