Brain-inspired artificial intelligence in robots
Research groups at KAIST, the University of Cambridge, Japan‘s National Institute for Information and Communications Technology, and Google DeepMind argue that our understanding of how humans make intelligent decisions has now reached a critical point in which robot intelligence can be significantly enhanced by mimicking strategies that the human brain uses when we make decisions in our everyday lives.
In our rapidly changing world, both humans and autonomous robots constantly need to learn and adapt to new environments. But the difference is that humans are capable of making decisions according to the unique situations, whereas robots still rely on predetermined data to make decisions.
Despite the rapid progress being made in strengthening the physical capability of robots, their central control systems, which govern how robots decide what to do at any one time, are still inferior to those of humans. In particular, they often rely on pre-programmed instructions to direct their behavior, and lack the hallmark of human behavior, that is, the flexibility and capacity to quickly learn and adapt.
Applying neuroscience in robotics, Professor Sang Wan Lee from the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering, KAIST and Professor Ben Seymour from the University of Cambridge and Japan‘s National Institute for Information and Communications Technology proposed a case in which robots should be designed based on the principles of the human brain. They argue that robot intelligence can be significantly enhanced by mimicking strategies that the human brain uses during decision-making processes in everyday life.
The problem with importing human-like intelligence into robots has always been a difficult task without knowing the computational principles for how the human brain makes decisions –in other words, how to translate brain activity into computer code for the robots’ “brains.”
However, researchers now argue that, following a series of recent discoveries in the field of computational neuroscience, there is enough of this code to effectively write it into robots.
