Rather than engineering robotic solutions from scratch, some of our most impressive advances have come from copying what nature has already come up with.
A new research shows how we can get a robot to learn the best route out of a maze on its own, even if it has to keep a sort-of memory of particular turns.
A team of engineers designed a Lego robot that had to start again when it hit a dead end, because it had to turn right at every function until it hit a point it had previously visited.
The software on board the robot was able to remember false turns and correct them the next time.
Imke Krauhausen, an electrical engineer from the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, says that their device is changed by applying a certain amount of electricity.
The resistance in the device can be changed by tuning it. The robot turns right or left.
The maze was two square meters in size and the robot took 16 tries to get out.
The device's neuromorphic circuit was the key to the correct operation of the robot. The material can retain stored states for an extended period of time, which means the robot can use its memory to navigate the maze.
The researchers were able to cut down on the power demands and the size of the finished robot by building a brain-like circuit that mimics the brain.
"This sensorimotor integration, in which sense and movement reinforce one another, is also very much how nature operates, so this is what we tried to emulate in our robot," says Krauhausen.
This builds on previous research from some of the team into how electronic devices can be more biological in their design and operation, while also achieving a high level of reliability and efficiency. There are a growing number of developments in this field.
Scientists want to develop the amount of processing that can be done on board devices themselves, which will require further engineering improvements and larger grids of circuits to take on more complex tasks.
Eventually, systems like this could be used in a lot of different ways. By cutting the reliance on software and the cloud, bots can operate on their own.
"Because of their organic nature, these smart devices can be integrated with actual nerve cells," says Krauhausen. Say you lost your arm. You could use these devices to link your body to a hand.
Science Advances has published the research.
