Researchers of the Department of Architecture and Computing Technology at the University of Granada (Universidad de Granada) have made important progress in the field of Robotics — building the first artificial cerebellum. The study has led to the design of microchips that incorporate a full neuronal system, emulating the cerebellar structure of the human nervous system. If these microchips are applied to robots, they will be able to manipulate and interact with other objects and persons. In other words, androids would interact with objects and people more naturally than at present thanks to this artificial cerebellum.
The cerebellum is the region of the nervous system which coordinates the sense receptors and the locomotive apparatus. Thus, it controls such cognitive functions as attention, language processing, music, or the abstraction of other sensorial stimuli such as temporal sequences — hence the significance of the study conducted at UGR coordinated by researcher Eduardo Ros Vidal.
“Although robots are increasingly more important in our society and have more advanced technology, they cannot yet do certain tasks like those carried out by mammals. Continuous learning in real time is still a problem”, says researcher Ros Vidal. Furthermore, building artificial cerebellums might yield some clues to treat cognitive diseases such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s.
Human-like robots
The project to implant these “human cerebellums” is called SENSOPAC. It is supported by Sony, the German Aerospace Centre (LDR) and the Universities of Edinburgh, Erasmus, Pavia, Lund, and Cambridge, among others. Moreover, It is the continuation of the previous project called SpikeFORCE (http://www.spike.org/), on which physicists, neuroscience experts and electronic engineers worked since 2002 to make robots able to move like animals and perceive a significant number of sensorial and motor signals to form cognitive notions.
Researcher Ros Vidal emphasizes that the goal of SENSOPAC is to be the definitive impetus needed by technology in order to spread the use of robots in our daily life. “Although we have been talking about humanoids for years, we do not yet see them on the street or use the unlimited possibilities they offer us”, says Ros Vidal. Therefore, the aim is to implant bioinspired control and movement systems in androids similar to those systems used by humans.
Ros Vidal points out that the next step of this project is to create an artificial skin for robots, thus giving them a more human aspect and incorporating an information-sensitive system resembling that of humans. This kind of advanced sensor is being developed by the German Aerospace Centre, although the other research groups participating in this project are also collaborating to design suitable processing strategies for this device.
Part of the results of this study were published in renowned journals such as Neural Computation and IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks.
Reference: Prof. Eduardo Ros Vidal. Department of Architecture and Computing Technology of the University of Granada. Telephone: (+34) 958 246 128. Mobile: (+34) 657 556 034. E-mail: eduardo@atc@ugr.es Web: www.sensopac.org>
