Biomimicry is one of the most inspiring fields around which present day robotics researches revolve. It is our technology exchange with mother nature, who cranks out newer and newer designs that we have never even dreamt of and many that we haven’t been able to figure out yet. The reason being evident that it is one of the most energy efficient and most widely tested and naturally certified designs ever possible. These kinds of designs for robots ensure more stability in all aspects and bring to advantage several latest technologies.
Researchers are presently taking a step foreward in the artificial intelligence technology by trying to mimic the human brain and its neurons to be used in robots. Researchers from the National University Of Ireland And The University Of Ulster have been working on this with the main aim of applying an electronic neural device called the Hardware Spiking Neural Network to the control and behavior of an autonomous robot. The present day silicon IC technology is not capable of handling the complexity of the neurons found in the human brain. Researchers have now successfully fabricated and used spiking neural networks for robotics control. In a manner similar to that of the brain, the device can be trained to perform a specific function and also later retrained to perform some other functions.
To date, robotics technologies have concentrated on usage of microprocessors for autonomous robots. The major concern here is the power consumption. The awerage power consumption of the brain is about 10watts while that of a computer is about 300 watts.
The ultimate goal of such a device is to identify and overcome electronic faults that occur within itself and to adapt to its surroundings without human intervention.