Satellite's Circuits Emulate Nervous System 23
desslok writes "A new type of attitude-control system will be put to the
test this August when it is launched into orbit as part of
the Swedish Hugin satellite. The new board, developed
by researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory, in
N.M., comes directly out of research that uses analog
electronics to simulate the nervous systems of real
animals. "
Re:The all important question (Score:2)
Is it based off of alien technology out of Roswell? -NG
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Given infinite time, 100 monkeys could type out the complete works of Shakespeare.
Is it the first commercial application? (Score:1)
At long last... (Score:2)
This will be really handy for exploring the likes of Mars, dismantling old nuclear reactors, and whoo knows what.
I wonder if anyone's simulated this type of "behaviour" on a (digital) computer? Imagine if such a program, responding to external stimulii could reprogram itself in response and "grow more circuits" ie learn.
Perhaps we have the first tentative steps to passing the Turing test?
Time for humans to sit back and let the machines do all the work.
Well, maybe not.
Re:Is this related to "Fuzzy logic"? (Score:2)
if(Temperature 60) {
turn on the heat
}
Fuzzy logic assigns a value for the truth of the
statement. Rather than just being cold there is a degree of cold, and there can be a degree of hot. So based on the relative strengths of the two assertions you can control the amount of cooling or heating provided in a continuous manner.
A lot of respectable engineers feel that fuzzy logic is bunk, look up some of Bob Pease's articles in Electronic Design for some not so favourable reviews. A lot of others don't.
Re:Is it the first commercial application? (Score:2)
BTW, the guy who did a lot of the initial work on this whom you are probably thinking of is Adrian Thompson. Alternatively you could have been thinking of Hugo DeGaris and the smoke and mirror game he has been running with the press for several years related to his CAM-Brain project (this is a variation of EHW whereby a cellular automata is used to generate random neural pathways/connections and then the system evolves the weightings.)
Beam Robotics (Score:3)
http://nis-www.lanl.gov/robot/
Re:At long last... (Score:1)
Actually the only thing kinda like revolutionary to this is that they did it without simulating it in a digital computer. Systems that emulate neural behaviours are being studied for several decades now at AI labs and universities. One special point of interest has been the growing of neural networks that you mentioned, but the results are not very encouraging until now. Just the last couple of years the growing of neural networks using genetic alghoritms has produced some results that actually solved some problems, but simulating evolution may take some time... (Like 5 billion years or so)
>Perhaps we have the first tentative steps to >passing the Turing test?
Not likely that this will come from this side of AI research, from a bug to a human is a long way. Some Results in this direction are soon to be expected from the language side of AI. (I hope)
>Time for humans to sit back and let the machines >do all the work.
>Well, maybe not.
You were probably sitting back behind your computer when you wrote this
You can actually experiment with the concepts (Score:4)
Essentially they're based on wiring an even number of inverting stages together. Normally this would settle on some ugly analog value that the gates really aren't designed to. By letting motors perturb the gates inputs via RC coupling the outputs of the gates will go into patterns of digital signals. In the proper conditions these signals can be amplified to drive motors in a walking type motion. Further perturbations change the gate of the walk etc.
The community is called BEAM robotics [lanl.gov].
Re:Is it the first commercial application? (Score:1)
Jim, since you sound pretty savvy on the subject, maybe you could make sure something gets submitted to /. after the GECCO conference? I for one would be very interested, and it certainly is news for nerds.
Re:Is it the first commercial application? (Score:1)
The guy behind this is named Kent Gilson. We haven't heard much from him lately.
(I think you could even run Linux on it.)
Satelite as Head (Score:1)
(for the layman, a pixelsat was a concept for a simple spy satelite with very low weight, cost, and resolution. the idea was to launch a whole bunch and network them -- beowulf imaging if you will. The thing that had to do with BEAM was that they utilized a device known as a solarengine.
Imagine a way to amplify and store electricity from solar panels to run a system intermittently in lower-than-optimal light. It's a pretty simple cicuit that can be built from cheap components that are fairly space hardy without modification. the pixelsats were to use the current from the SE to drive a magnetic coil and maintain position by thrusting against the earth's magnetosphere, a design based upon the MagBot, a pretty little piece of robotartwork that used a slick, thin surface and another magnet to thrust against.)
Behold the dawn of the New Analog age... (Score:1)
Analog processing is simply better for some things than digital, and it's been my firm belief that when technology allowed sufficient miniturization and flexibility in analog circuitry, we would see a resurgence of interest in analog techniques, especially in areas such as sensing and response.
My original background is in robotics and automation - one reason I left the field was the nagging feeling that we were being forced to work with a kludge - it was apparent even in the mid-80's that we needed something like neural systems to significantly advance the state of the art. A hybrid analog/digital system based on Rodney Brooks-style control layers would offer a reasonable promise of a robot that can successfully mimic a rudimentary "intelligence".
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that we may truly be witnessing the beginnings of a renaissance in analog computing and signal processing. Announcements like the one above, and the fact that people are finally succeeding in building microscopic low-power vacuum tubes (ideal for this sort of stuff), lead me to believe we may see analog applied more and more often in areas where it has real benefits over digital.
Another take on cathedrals:
I Want One! (Score:1)
Starbridge systems (Score:1)
As with most of the Slashdot commenters, I dont find Starbridge very credible. I'll believe it when it's sitting on my desk crunching one of my programs and not until then.
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Getting the facts straight (Score:1)
Is this related to "Fuzzy logic"? (Score:1)
Now I can see that this differs from what is described here, as fuzzy logic does not require a neural net. But if I understand the article (and discussion) correctly, the networks described here uses analog, and not digital signals. Is that a necessary requirement, or could such a nervous system be built on top of digital signals as well? I am not talking about emulating an analog system using a digital system, which is definitely doable (and probably much more efficient during the development phase).