IMAGINE the scene. A roving robot is trundling over the Martian landscape
when static electricity zaps one of its sensors, blinding it. It’s millions of
miles from the repair shop back home, so what can it do to recover?
Simple—it rewires its nervous system so other sensors can take over from
the dead one, then carries on.
That’s the idea behind a robot controller being developed at the department
of electronics and computer science at the University of Southampton. It is
inspired by the ability of animals to adapt to injury and unfamiliar
environments by rearranging the connections in…
