Snail Brains Could Help Scientists Create Smarter Robots

You would think that if you were to develop an AI system or a brain of a robot that it would be highly complex. After all with all the different things we can think of and when it comes to problem solving, it would certainly involve complex algorithms and programming, right? However it seems that a recent discovery has suggested that maybe less is more.

Scientists at the University of Sussex have discovered that snail brains could be the key to helping develop smarter robots. The scientists attached electrodes to the brains of snails and according to their findings, the snail only used two brain cells to make complex decisions. One cell told the snail it was hungry, and the other told it if food was near.

So how does this lead to smarter robots? By using such a simple system, scientists found that this actually saved the snails energy by reducing brain activity when there was no food around. According to Professor George Kemenes, “Our findings can help scientists to identify other core neuronal systems which underlie similar decision making processes. This will eventually help us design the ‘brains’ of robots based on the principle of using the fewest possible components necessary to perform complex tasks.”

Of course whether or not such a system would prove to be effective remains to be seen as it has yet to be put into practice, but on paper it certainly makes a lot of sense.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Robots
Tags: nature, Science