The nth+1 book on how the brain works has appeared, this time at the hand of Ray Kurzweil. How many books have been written to date that claim to finally have cracked the brain, and promise that, for a mere $18.36, you can read it all? One too many... This FREE Neurdon article will save your next $20. Read the rest of this entry »
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So, you know how the brain works?… Just do it!
| December 25, 2012 -
Why robots make sense for space exploration, and what would humans do…
| December 1, 2012
Is the era of passionate, flash-and-bones explores like Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan, all the way down to their modern counterparts Neir Armstrong, over once and for all? Are humans explored just not "sturdy" enough to face the hurdles of modern space exploration? May be yes, but with a twist. Read the rest of this entry » -
The Spikey chip
| November 24, 2012
A new article on New scientist features Spikey, the new chip coming out of Karlheinz Meier's group. The University of Heidelberg, Germany, chip contains contains 400 "neurons". The original article (see link) describes the various networks the group was able to implement in the chip, which includes a variety of different circuits. Read the rest of this entry » -
The future of brain-computer interface: A glimpse into the nanomembrane-filled crystal ball
| November 6, 2012
Brain-computer interface is... just what it sounds like. Some device is used to transfer information about the brain's activity to a computer, or vice versa. So we end up with two flavors of BCI: recording (for the brain-to-computer direction), and stimulating (for the computer-to-brain path). Utilizing the lucky fact that electrical signals are the language of the brain, we can do both of these things with tiny electrodes placed either in, on, or next to cells. And with this dual pathway we can then read off motor cortex information in order to move a prosthetic limb, or send seizure-combating signals into an epileptic brain. It seems so simple, right? Read the rest of this entry » -
Neural Assembly Computing: a brief overview
| October 18, 2012João Ranhel – Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (UFPE) Recife, Brazil.
The idea is pretty simple, though it is remarkable: “neurons represent information and compute as they form cell assemblies”. This notion is quite old, going back to early- and mid-twentieth century. The first evidences probably came from observations of muscles activities, once increasing or decreasing the number of active motor units changes the amount of force produced by a muscle. Read the rest of this entry »Comments: 4 CommentsCategories: Uncategorized -
Gotta keep ‘em separated: Neuromorphic aircraft collision avoidance
| October 5, 2012
Piloting ain't easy. In addition to getting an intuition of the physics of flight, a pilot has to learn how to fly by instruments and how to fly safely with other aircraft. A speck on the horizon may be another aircraft heading straight toward the pilot, at which point changing a course is necessary before the speck starts growing and it may be too late to avoid a collision. With an increasing number of airplanes in the sky, and the perspective of even more unmanned aircraft claiming a share of that space, there is a growing need for technology able to capture the basic skills of learning how to avoid aerial collisions. Read the rest of this entry » -
Parallella and Adapteva
| September 28, 2012
Adapteva, a company that was on Neurdon's radar for a while, is launching their new Parallella project. The end goal is to make parallel computing, including the sort of massively parallel computing neural modelers need, both easy and cheap. And we like both... Read the rest of this entry »Comments: 4 Comments -
Inflatable robots
| September 22, 2012
One way in which robots will become more commonplace in our homes and working environments is by making the cheaper than today's. One of the most expensive components in a robot are actuators such as arms, which require often costly, complicated, and power-hungry designs. Annan Mozeika, Principal Robotics Engineer at iRobot Corporation, is leading his company's research efforts in inflatable robotics. Read the rest of this entry »Comments: Leave a commentCategories: Robotics -
Bringing together Biologically Inspired Vision and BMI on Mobile Robots
| August 25, 2012
God and the human brain work in mysterious ways. Imagine if we could harness the power of the brain to move objects around in the world like a telekinetic super power. Better still, imagine a patient with locked-in syndrome plus those super powers and an object recognition system that is designed to look and learn like we do! Enter CogEye, Unlock and the topic of this post. Read the rest of this entry » -
Advances in Neuromorphic Memristor Science and Applications
| August 13, 2012
This recent book, part of the Springer Series in Cognitive and Neural Systems (Editors Robert Kozma, Robinson E. Pino, and Giovanni E. Pazienza), is one that may become part of Neurdons bookshelves. In "Advances in Neuromorphic Memristor Science and Applications", the main researchers behind the pioneering work on memristors and their applications to bio-inspired machine intelligence review the state of the art and predict trends. The Abstract: Physical implementation of the memristor at industrial scale sparked the interest from various disciplines, ranging from physics, nanotechnology, electrical engineering, neuroscience, to intelligent robotics. As any promising new technology, it has raised hopes and questions; it is an extremely challenging task to live up to the high expectations and to devise revolutionary and feasible future applications for memristive devices. The possibility of gathering prominent scientists in the heart of the Silicon Valley given by the 2011 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks held in San Jose, CA, has offered us the unique opportunity of organizing a series of special events on the present status and future. Read the rest of this entry »