Lego Robot with an Organic 'Brain' Learns to Navigate a Maze

In the winter of 1997 Carver Mead lectured on an unusual topic for a computer scientist: the nervous systems of animals, such as the humble fly. Mead, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology, described his earlier idea for an electronic problem-solving system inspired by nerve cells, a technique he had dubbed "neuromorphic" computing. A quarter-century later, researchers have designed a carbon-based neuromorphic computing device--essentially an organic robot brain--that can learn to navigate a maze. A neuromorphic chip memorizes information similarly to the way an animal does. When a brain learns something new, a group of its neurons rearrange their connections so they can communicate more quickly and easily.