Scientists Built a Functional Computer With Human Brain Tissue

There is no computer even remotely as powerful and complex as the human brain. The lumps of tissue ensconced in our skulls can process information at quantities and speeds that computing technology can barely touch.

Key to the brain’s success is the neuron’s efficiency in serving as both a processor and memory device, in contrast to the physically separated units in most modern computing devices.

There have been many attempts to make computing more brain-like, but a new effort takes it all a step further – by integrating real, actual, human brain tissue with electronics.

It’s called Brainoware, and it works. A team led by engineer Feng Guo of Indiana University Bloomington fed it tasks like speech recognition and nonlinear equation prediction.

It was slightly less accurate than a pure hardware computer running on artificial intelligence, but the research demonstrates an important first step in a new kind of computer architecture.

However, while Guo and his colleagues followed the ethics guidelines in the development of Brainoware, several researchers from Johns Hopkins University note in a related Nature Electronics commentary the importance of keeping ethical considerations in mind while expanding this technology further.

Lena Smirnova, Brian Caffo, and Erik C. Johnson, who weren’t involved with the study, caution, “As the sophistication of these organoid systems increases, it is critical for the community to examine the myriad of neuroethical issues that surround biocomputing systems incorporating human neural tissue.”

The human brain is kind of jaw-droppingly amazing. It contains an estimated 86 billion neurons, on average, and up to a quadrillion synapses. Each neuron is connected to up to 10,000 other neurons, constantly firing and communicating with each other.

To date, our best effort to simulate the activity of the brain in an artificial system barely scratched the surface.

In 2013, Riken’s K Computer – then one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world – made an attempt to mimic the brain. With 82,944 processors and a petabyte of main memory, it took 40 minutes to simulate one second of the activity of 1.73 billion neurons connected by 10.4 trillion synapses – around just one to two percent of the brain.

In recent years, scientists and engineers have been trying to approach the capabilities of the brain by designing hardware and algorithms that mimic its structure and the way it works. Known as neuromorphic computing, it is improving but it’s energy-intensive, and training artificial neural networks is time-consuming.

Guo and his colleagues sought a different approach using real human brain tissue grown in a lab. Human pluripotent stem cells were coaxed into developing into different types of brain cells that organized into three-dimensional mini-brains called organoids, complete with connections and structures …….

full articlehttps://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-built-a-functional-computer-with-human-brain-tissue

Flexoskeleton printing: Fabricating flexible exoskeletons for insect-inspired robots

Insects typically have a variety of complex exoskeleton structures, which support them in their movements and everyday activities. Fabricating artificial exoskeletons for insect-inspired robots that match the complexity of these naturally-occurring structures is a key challenge in the field of robotics.
Flexoskeleton printing: fabricating flexible exoskeletons for insect-inspired robots

Although researchers have proposed several  and techniques to produce exoskeletons for insect-inspired robots, many of these methods are extremely complex or rely on expensive equipment and materials. This makes them unfeasible and difficult to apply on a wider scale.

With this in mind, researchers at the University of California in San Diego have recently developed a new process to design and fabricate components for insect-inspired robots with  structures. They introduced this process, called flexoskeleton printing, in a paper prepublished on arXiv.

“Inspired by the insect exoskeleton, we present a new  process called ‘flexoskeleton’ printing that enables rapid and accessible fabrication of hybrid rigid/soft robots,” the researchers wrote in their paper.

So far, hybrid robots with both rigid and soft components have been typically built using expensive materials and 3-D printers, as well as multi-step casting and machine processes. In their study, the research team at UC San Diego set out to create a new fabrication method that is cheaper and easier to use.

Flexoskeleton printing: fabricating flexible exoskeletons for insect-inspired robots

a) A figure explaining how the printing process introduced by the researchers works. b) A four-legged robot created using the researchers’ method, immediately after printing on clear PC layer. c) The four legged robot after release from the PC layer. Credit: Jiang, Zhou & Gravish.

Flexoskeleton printing, the method they developed, relies on an adaptation of a consumer grade fused deposition material (FDM) 3-D printer, which provides an extremely strong bond strength between the deposited material and the printer’s flexible base layer. This process can be used to create exoskeletons for insect-inspired robots with different shapes and morphologies.

Remarkably, the fabrication approach proposed by the researchers can be used by both novice and expert users, as it is fairly straightforward and easy to understand. It is also far more affordable than alternative fabrication methods, as the materials and equipment it relies on are considerably cheap and readily available.

In their study, the team demonstrated the feasibility of their approach by using it to design and test a wide variety of canonical flexoskeleton elements. They then combined all the elements they produced into a walking four-legged  with a flexible exoskeleton structure.

“The approach we have developed relies heavily on the interrelationships between three dimensional geometry of surface features and their contributions to the local mechanical properties of that component,” the researchers wrote in their paper. “We envision that this method will enable a new class of bio-inspired robots with focus on the interrelationships between  and locomotion.”

In the future, the new design and fabrication process devised by this team of researchers could enable the development of numerous insect-inspired robots. As the technique is far more straightforward and affordable than most existing methods, it could also make existing or new robots easier to scale up, increasing their chances of being produced in larger quantities and appearing on the market.

Source:
https://techxplore.com/news/2019-11-flexoskeleton-fabricating-flexible-exoskeletons-insect-inspired.html

More information: Flexoskeleton printing for versatile insect-inspired robots. arXiv:1911.06897 [cs.RO]. arxiv.org/abs/1911.06897

Gorlov helical wind turbine from my 3D printer

The Quietrevolution-Gorlov helical turbine (GHT) is a water turbine evolved from the Darrieus turbine design by altering it to have helical blades/foils. The physical principles of the GHT work are the same as for its main prototype, the Darrieus turbine, and for the family of similar vertical axis wind turbines which includes also Turby wind turbine, aerotecture turbine, Quietrevolution wind turbine, etc. GHT, Turby and Quietrevolution solved pulsatory torque issues by using the helical twist of the blades.

The resulting work, all mechanically printed completely on a 3D printer. A DC motor with a permanent magnet serves as a generator. The motor voltage at the output is 1.8V / 1 RPS.

Wiki:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quietrevolution_wind_turbine

How to make your own deep learning accelerator chip!

AI Landscape by Shan Tang : Source