More than a year ago, Electronic Products brought you the story of the Open Worm, researchers’ attempt to build a lifelike copy of a nematode roundworm entirely out of computer code. At that time, the researchers had figured out a way to inject computer code into the worm so that it would wriggle just like its real-life counterpart. Their next steps were to plug the virtual copy of the worm into a system so that researchers could create a model of how the worm’s nerve fibers fire off in order to get the muscles twitching, thereby propelling it forward.
Fast forward more than 14 months and the Open Worm Project has developed at breakneck speeds. Nowadays, the project aims to create a free-thinking robot, powered by neurological pathways that make up its synthetic “brain.”
According to a recent article, the “new-age robot is the result of an international collaboration between scientists and programmers alike, that have managed to build an example of artificial intelligence that responds to environmental stimuli. The robot operates primarily from a neurological network that mirrors that of the creature which the project adopted its name from, a roundworm.”
Essentially, the Open Worm subject can operate a small robot through the tracking of the worm’s neuron activity. The Open Worm Project’s robot relies on external cues collected in its memory bank to determine negative, positive and neutral stimuli. For example, if the free-thinking robot hits a wall, it can respond by backing up and making a note in its memory that that was a negative experience, thus avoiding it in the future.
Interestingly, the robot is currently being constructed by LEGO blocks, but the project’s researchers hope to create more advanced iterations of the robots over time. They have even tossed around the idea of mirroring larger neural networks.
“We definitely have further to go, but I think what captures people's imagination is how much information we have managed to put together,” Stephen Larson, Project Coordinator of the Open Worm Project recently stated. “We know we have the correct number of neurons, we have them connected together in roughly the same way that the animal has, and they're organized in the same way in that there are some neurons that give out information and other neurons that receive information.”
To learn more about the Open Worm Project, check out the open-source platform’s website, which includes a modular simulation engine, explicit details about the connections of every neuron the worm has, and even an Open Worm 3D Browser, which allows site visitors to take the worm apart, zooming, rotating and peeling back layers of the 3D worm without ever getting their hands dirty.
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