Atlanta (July 8,2003)—Working from their university labs in two different corners of the world, U.S. and Australian researchers have created what they call a new class of creative beings, “the semi-living artist” – a picture-drawing robot in Perth, Australia whose movements are controlled by the brain signals of cultured rat cells in Atlanta.

And they make great pets.

] The network of brain cells, located in Professor Steve
] Potters lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology
] in Atlanta, and the mechanical arm, located in the lab of
] Guy Ben-Ary at the University of Western Australia in
] Perth, interact in real-time through a data exchange
] system via an Internet connection between the robot and
] the brain cells.

] Central to the experiment is Potter's
] belief that over time the teams will be able to establish
] a cultured in vitro network system that learns like the
] living brains in people and animals do. To achieve that,
] the information from the robot’s sensors is sent back
] through the system to the cultured network of cells in
] the form of electrical stimuli. By closing the loop, the
] group hopes the robot will learn something about itself
] and its environment.

Is this significant or just fringe science? Potential significance:

- Combination of biological and electronic systems. There's other interesting work in this field, some of which Potter has been involved with.

- Development of effective laboratory technique is an important contribution to research in the squishy sciences.

- An agent whose brain and sensors/actuators interact through the internet.