A car fitted with a navigation system inspired by a rat’s brain has successfully mapped a 66-kilometre road network in a suburb of Brisbane, Australia. Built by Michael Milford and Gordon Wyeth at the University of Queensland in St Lucia, the system is designed to give future autonomous robotic vehicles the ability to explore and map their environment.
At its heart is a neural network that mimics the way a rat makes a mental map of an area as it scurries through it – a concept known as simultaneous localisation and mapping. Specialised neurons in a rat’s brain called “place”,…
