carnegie mellon university

Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University have discovered how the brain essentially re-wires itself to quickly process new stimuli.

Connections between neurons change rapidly, based on the input to the brain. So, when your nose picks up an odor, a whole bunch of neurons start to fire, but then a process called lateral inhibition kicks in. With lateral inhibition, certain neurons tell their neighbors to shut up and thereby reduce the noise, allowing the brain to focus on identifying the smell.

In this work, the group identified a process that enhances lateral inhibition, so the brain can quickly and clearly identify a stimulus. Read the full paper in Nature Neuroscience.—Gregory Mone

It's striding toward us from the kitchen, smoothly and silently. As I set down my overnight bag and turn to question my friend Jack, it ambles gracefully into the foyer. I can sense Jack watching me out of the corner of his eye, looking for a reaction as his newest purchase stops and stands beside us on two thin mechanical legs and clasps two four-fingered hands behind its back. It's smaller than the average person, lithe, entirely unthreateningI could take it in a fight. The face isn't human, but it's not the face of an appliance either.

When we catch up with the robot, it is poking along in a herky-jerky and rather flummoxed fashion through the Atacama Desert, which covers much of far northern Chile. The Atacama is reputedly the driest place on Earth, with rainfall measured in millimeters per decade. It is a rough place for man or robot, a tawny maze of high plateaus and shaley foothills under constant sun and an enormous cobalt-blue sky.

In this, the fifth of a series, Popular Science profiles one of the favored teams competing to win the Darpa Grand Challenge autonomous-vehicle race, which will take place on Saturday, October 8, near Primm, Nevada. Today we look at the Red Team's next-generation Hummer, which features a sophisticated system of integrated sensors. Stay tuned to popsci.comfor more previews throughout the week and for minute-by-minute videos and updates on race day.

If you've ever thought it'd be cool to make your own robot but didn't because your options were Legos (ho-hum) or fabricating one from scratch (who's got the time?), listen up: RadioShack's new Vex Robotics Design System (vexrobotics.com) is the ultimate compromise. The $300 kit contains more than 500 parts, including steel plates, motors, radio receivers and a six-channel remote. What to build? That's up to you.

Accompanying the Vex Robotics kit, featured in this month’s What’s New section [page 24], is the Vex Robotics Design System’s Inventor’s Guide. The guide is more than just a stapled pamphlet with instructions on how to build a cookie-cutter robot. It introduces and explains basic engineering concepts relating to the Vex system, penned under direction from the Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute.

This October Carnegie Mellon University will celebrate the 25th anniversary of its renowned Robotics Institute and welcome a few new members into its Robot Hall of Fame. The fact that two of this year’s inductees—Astroboy and C3PO—are imaginary is typical in a field that lingers somewhere between science and fiction. One of the ultimate goals for roboticists, a machine that’s as easy to talk to as a human, is still

When last we visited with the men and women, the boys and girls, the Red Teams and Blue Teams and Road Warriors of the DARPA Grand Challenge off-road robotics race, back in March, we signed off on a note of authentic ambivalence. The teams themselves were all over the map, from rehearsing victory speeches to praying they would pass the qualifying round and be allowed on to what was anticipated to be a 210-mile course from outside Los Angeles through the Mojave Desert to somewhere just west of Vegas.

Bugs can go places that humans can’t; they cooperate better than almost any other organism; some of them can even fly. It’s those desirable traits that are driving robotics toward a future that looks more like A Bug’s Life than The Jetsons.

Within a decade or so, swarms of mechatronic bugs outfitted with sensors and wireless transceivers will likely be burrowing through the rubble of buildings to search for earthquake survivors and scrabbling over the hull of a spacecraft to repair damage inflight.