Connecting
Brains to Robots: The Development of a Hybrid System for the Study of Learning
in Neural Tissues
Bernard D. Reger
1 , Karen
M. Fleming 1 , Vittorio Sanguineti 2 ,SimonAlford 3 and
Reger, B, Fleming, KM, Sanguineti, V, Simon Alford, S, Mussa-Ivaldi, FA. (2000) Connecting Brains to Robots: The Development of a Hybrid System for the Study of Learning in Neural Tissues. Artificial Life VII, Portland, Oregon, August 2000.
Ferdinando A.
Mussa-Ivaldi 1
1 Department of Physiology, Northwestern University Medical School,
Chicago, IL 60611
2 Dipartimento di Infomatica Sistemistica e Telematica, Università di
Genova, Italy
3 Department of Biological Sciences, University of Illinois at
Chicago, Chicago, IL 60607
Abstract
We have developed a hybrid neuro-robotic system based on
a two-way communication between the brain of a lamprey
and a small mobile robot. The purpose of this system is to
offer a new paradigm for investigating the behavioral,
computational and neurobiological mechanisms of sensory
motor learning in a unified context. The mobile robot acts as
an artificial body that delivers sensory information to the
neural tissue and receives command signals from it. The
sensory information encodes the intensity of light generated
by a fixed source. The closed-loop interaction between brain
and robot generates autonomous behaviors whose features
are strictly related to the structure and operation of the
neural preparation. In this paper we provide a detailed
description of the hybrid system and we present
experimental findings on its performance. In particular, we
found (a) that the hybrid system generates stable
behaviors; (b) that different preparation display different but
systematic responses to the presentation of an optical
stimulus and (c) that alteration of the sensory input lead to
short and long term adaptive changes in the robot responses.
The comparison of the behaviors generated by the lamprey’s
brainstem with the behaviors generated by network models
of the same neural system provides us with a new tool for
investigating the computational properties of
synaptic plasticity.