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Media Relations

Vision-body link tested in robot experiments

New Scientist
Oct. 30, 2006

By Tom Simonite

We use all of our senses to interact with our environment. Our brain and our body work together, but are robots designed in a similar way? An Indiana University neuroscientist and a University of Tokyo roboticist have worked together with real and simulated robots to verify that valid information doesn't only come from the brain. They measured the information flow from the environment to the robots, and then from the robots back to the environment by recording what the robots saw and what they did. And now, they think they can build better robots by taking into account all kinds of sensory information. Olaf Sporns, a neuroscientist at Indiana University, has said that tests involving two real and one simulated robot show that feedback between sensory input and body movement will help better understand the relationship of the robots towards their surrounding world.

Read the entire article at: http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn10390-visionbody-link-tested-in-robot-experiments.html

Read more about Sporns: http://www.indiana.edu/~psych/faculty/sporns.html

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