RATBOTS USING RATS AS ROBOTS

RATBOTS

       USING RATS AS ROBOTS 

 

Abstract :

“Robot" as an "apparently human automation, intelligent but impersonal machine..."

A ratbot or roborat is a rat controlled through implants in its brain.

            Guided rats controlled through implants in their brains could one day be used to search for landmines or buried victims of earthquakes, scientists say.

            An extraordinary experiment has seen researchers steering five rodents - so-called rat bots - through an obstacle course by remote control.

            Writing in the journal Nature, the scientists say the ratbots could reach places inaccessible to humans or machines.

            "One can think of the guided rat as a very good robot platform capable of traversing terrain that modern robots are unable to do," Dr Talwar said

            The rodents in the first experiment wore a small electronics backpack that linked to electrodes in their brains. They received radio commands from a laptop that would stimulate sensations in their whiskers and reward/pleasure receptors to manipulate them into following pre-programmed routes. Some researchers propose using them to search for landmines or buried victims of earthquakes, as they can much more efficiently scout such areas than human rescuers or existing robots.

            The rats also quickly learnt to associate the stimulation of their brains' reward centres with simply walking forwards, even if this involved climbing or descending ladders or steps, or moving into the centre of a brightly lit room - something that most rats would avoid.

INTRODUCTION

            Rat - common name for any large member of a family of rodents, with dull - colored, coarse fur; long tails; large ears; and a pointed snout. Rats have extremely powerful teeth, with which they often gnaw through wooden planks to get at stores of food, and they have even been known to bite holes in lead pipes. They are usually nocturnal and live in human habitations, in forests, in deserts, and on seagoing ships. They are extremely prolific, breeding 1 to 13 times a year and producing 1 to 22 young in a litter. Most species of rats are herbivorous, but some are omnivorous. Rats have an average lifespan of eight months to one year in the wild and two to three years in captivity.

·         Animals have often been used by humans in combat and in search and rescue, but not under direct computer-to-brain electronic control.

·         The advent of surgically altered roborats marks the crossing new boundary in the mechanization, and potential militarization, of nature.

·         This ratbot technology isn’t nanotechnology yet, and it is not new, as the principle of “MIND CONTROL” through implantable devices is the same

THE FIRST ROBORAT

"Robo-rat" controlled by brain electrodes

            The age of the living robot is upon us. And all it takes to turn a living rat into a radio-controlled automaton is three electrodes carefully placed in the animal's brain. Simply pressing keys on a computer 500 meters away will then steer the animal over an obstacle course, making it twist, turn and even jump on demand.

            The researchers responsible for the "Robo Rat" claim their work will give neuroscientists a better understanding of how mammals learn to navigate. They say it will help pinpoint biochemical changes in the brain, and which brain regions are involved in processing different behaviours. They even suggest that such rats could be used to help clear minefields.

            But beyond this, lead researcher Sanjiv Talwar of the State University of New York in New York City is uncertain what benefits will emerge from the experiments. "It's difficult to predict what other studies this could be useful for right now," he told New Scientist. "There's going to have to be a wide debate to see whether this is acceptable or not."

            The idea of placing living creatures under direct human command is certainly raising concerns over the animals' welfare. "It's appalling, and yet another example of how the human species instrumentalises other species," says Gill Langley of the Dr Hadwen Trust based in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, which funds alternatives to animal-based research.

Brain electrodes

            Animal experiments such as drug trials are usually justified using the utilitarian argument. For a procedure to be acceptable, any suffering caused to an animal is supposed to be outweighed by an obvious benefit to people.

            "There are some ethical issues here which I can't deny," Talwar says. But he points out that the experiments stuck to guidelines laid down by the US National Institutes of Health, and he insists that the animal cannot be dubbed a "remote-controlled rat". The rat was not forced to do anything, he says, as the technique works by stimulating the reward centre of its brain.

            The researchers implanted one of the electrodes into the medial forebrain bundle (MFB), the part of the brain responsible for sensing reward. They placed the other two in parts of the somatosensory cortical area that receive stimulation from the left and right whiskers. Finally, a radio receiver tucked inside a rat-sized backpack was plugged into an interface in the rat's skull.

            The rats were trained to learn that they would be rewarded with continuous zaps to the MFB when they moved forwards, or when they turned according to an appropriate stimulation of the left or right whisker.

Carrot and stick

            Talwar likens the control over the rat to the way a donkey can be steered by a carrot on a stick. Though driven by a desire to be rewarded, the donkey remains in control of its movements. Using the same principle, the rat can be trained to do things it would not normally do, such as walking into brightly lit open spaces or jumping off a ledge.

            But Gary Francione, an expert in animal welfare law at Rutgers University School of Law, says: "The animal is no longer functioning as an animal," as the rat is operating under someone's control.

            And the issue goes beyond whether or not the stimulations are compelling or rewarding the rat to act. "There's got to be a level of discomfort in implanting these electrodes," he says, which may be difficult to justify.

            Talwar says the animals probably could not be persuaded to risk their lives in any way. Even so, he admits he cannot rule out coercion completely. For instance, the rats were never trained to jump off a ledge, but would do when commanded to go forward.

            In this case the stimulation appeared to act like a prod rather than a reward. Previous research has shown that if rats are stimulated electrically in this reward centre every time they press a lever, they may continue doing so until they die.

Fast forward

            Talwar has so far wired up five rats. He suggests that other electrodes could be added to give additional commands, like faster, or up and down. In theory, the technique should work with any animal that has an MFB, including most mammals and birds, although it's likely that higher animals could learn to ignore the commands.

            Talwar suggests wired animals would be ideal for search and rescue operations, as they could be directed through rubble to look for survivors and would be easier to navigate than mechanical robots.

            But Langley is concerned that other scientists will repeat the experiments on other animals, despite the ethical issues this raises. "The US Federal Animal Welfare Act doesn't cover rodents or birds," she points out, so researchers would not need a license or ethical approval.

Journal reference: Nature (vol 417, p 37)

Duncan Graham-Rowe

INTO THE TOPIC

·         Two electrodes lead to the parts of the rats' brains, which normally detect an obstacle against their whiskers. A third plunges into an area of the brain identified as far back as the 1950s as providing the rat with a feeling of pleasure when stimulated this area of stimulation is called Medial Forebrain Bundle (MFB)

·         Once trained they would move instantaneously and accurately as directed, for up to an hour at a time. The rats could be steered up ladders, along narrow ledges and down ramps, up trees, and into collapsed piles of concrete rubble.

STEP WISE PROCEDURE OF HOW RATBOTS ARE BUILT

·         Step-1

After anesthesia being given, the mouth of the rat is first cut in order    to go through the incision towards Brain.

·         Step-2

Now the incision continues towards to the head position  to reach the brain

·         Step-3

The Three electrodes used for stimulation are placed .

·         Step-4

A Back Pack with batteries, an antenna, a receiver  and a camera is placed to rat as shown beside

·         Step-5

Finally the rat is molded into Ratbot and the only thing left      with it is, it should be trained

HOW RATBOTS LOOK LIKE…

      The remote control rats look like school children, wearing small backpacks that house microprocessor-based remote-controlled stimulators. Wires connect the backpack to tiny probes that have been placed into areas of the rat’s brain that are responsible for reward and areas that process signals from their whiskers. Manipulating these two areas of the brain controls the rats.

WORKING (OR) OPERATION OF RATBOT

SCIENTISTS OPINIONS (ABOUT RATBOT)

·         It could save a lot of lives. It's not all bad for the rats because they feel pleasure when they go the right way

-------Sophie

·         Rats are small and can fit into places where we can’t. If it helps save lives then we should implement it.

-------Ashley

APPLICATIONS

 

Ø  Giant Rats Trained To Sniff Out Land Mines

Ø  Roborat Could Help Find Earthquake Victims

Ø  Used to find explosives.

 

                           

THE FUTURE

      This discovery grew out of ongoing research into  the development of thought-controlled prosthetic devices,   roboroach, moving a cursor using brain signal etc.,

EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA

      The work on guided rats was an offshoot of earlier research which showed that animals wired up to a processor could command a robotic arm by thought alone, a development which could potentially empower paralyzed humans

FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS

In one sense, the news last week that scientists have created a "roborat" represents an ingenious technical breakthrough. Engineers have tried for years--without success--to build robots smart enough to cross even a railroad track. Now, by combining off-the-shelf technology with a creature whose maneuvering skills have been honed by millions of years of evolution, physiologists at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn have created remotely piloted rodents that navigate complex terrain at the will of controllers who are more than 500 yards away. Wearing tiny backpacks equipped with radio transmitters and miniature TV cameras, the rats could someday be sent into a collapsed building to find survivors, say the scientists, or into a minefield to sniff out danger or off on a spy mission.

But look a little deeper, and the accomplishment is both less and more than meets the eye. It's less in part because the technology involved is so simple. Trainers have known for centuries that you can teach animals to perform all sorts of behaviors with a system of rewards or punishments. Neurophysiologists have known for decades that instead of an external reward like food, you can send electric impulses directly into the brain's pleasure center.

As they reported last week in Nature, Sanjiv Talwar and his colleagues did just that, tickling the rats' brains via radio transmitter when the rodents moved in a direction the researchers wanted. But although Talwar's team got the rats to do things they ordinarily wouldn't--climb trees, go out in bright light, ignore the scents of food and females--it took a controller at the helm to make this happen.

So although the rats may sound like cyborgs, they are really just rodents that follow instructions. And although they fit into tiny spaces and are more or less expendable, they are less useful in many ways than bloodhounds or bomb-sniffing dogs--or even primitive robots, which will roll mindlessly into fires, under water or into the glow of a nuclear-power-plant meltdown.

What's truly novel about this project is the way the rat controllers issue their instructions. By tapping a keyboard, they send signals via radio waves to electrodes implanted in the animal's brain: a mild jolt to neurons that sense the right whiskers means "turn right"; a zap to the left-whisker neurons means "go left." The surprise was how easy this was to do. Neurophysiologists have long dreamed of building artificial limbs with tactile feedback that would be sufficiently sensitive to tell a user when a hand is grasping a barbell tightly enough to keep it from falling or a baby chick loosely enough to keep from crushing it.

That's what Talwar and his group were trying to understand. "We wanted to determine how well rats understand incoming signals," he explains. "When we stimulated a region of the whiskers, they 'felt' a touch." Someday, says Mandayam Srinivasan, director of the M.I.T. Touch Lab, who helped show two years ago that monkeys could control robots by thought alone, "you could build a neural chip for paralyzed people, similar to a cochlear implant for deaf people, that uses brain signals to control prostheses.

Ethical problems

"It is a hard problem simply trying to make a robot move properly over unpredictable terrain. It would be a simple matter to train rescue rats to recognise and home in on the smell of a human trapped under rubble."

Dr Talwar acknowledged there might be ethical objections to such ideas, even if they could save human lives.

"Our animals were completely happy and treated well and in no sense was there any cruelty involved," he says.

"Nonetheless, the idea is sort of creepy. I do not know what the answer is to that." 

CONCLUSION

New inventions in science always have ethics as a shadow.

So what ever may be the ethics, the rat loves to become a RATBOT and helps to save human life.

REFERENCES

www.wireheading.com

www.rense.com

www.infowars.com