Neurotechnologies to Manage a Robotic System : (Keynote paper)

Abstract

In my talk I will discuss the AI and brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies overview in the context of integration with robotic and biological systems starting from classical Rosenblatt perceptron till current breaking through technologies of BCI that could change the scientific outlook of the field. This is what we currently broadly call now AI and neurotechnology. Two bright examples are ResNet inspired by the projections of a mammalian cortical column and U-Net with close to ResNet ideas and topology. The other interesting cortical column inspired NN architecture is hierarchical temporal memory introduced by the Numenta company. These brain or neuro inspired approaches are widely used in machine learning, computer vision, natural language processing, path planning and broader in robotics.In the neurotechnology field I want to reference a lot of interesting and projects dedicated to BCI. Starting from works of Miguel Nicolelis where researchers connected the robotic hand via a computer system with a motor cortex of a monkey and later Lebedev group demonstrated the adaptation of a mammalian brain to create the representation of robotic limb extending biological limbs. I want to pay the special attention to works of Kevin Warwick that implemented invasive nervous system to nervous system interface and the robot managed by neurons of a rat brain developed and trained during the experiment.The commercial company Neuralink recently demonstrated the most advanced 1536-channel BCI exploiting wireless Blue-tooth interface to record and process a brain activity. Elon Musk in his Neuralink presentation last year demanded that one of the nearest goals of the company is spinal cord injury and the recovery of the lost motor control of limbs. Several projects in neurorehabilitation targeted to the motor control demonstrated recently important success using medical programmed neurostimulators.The perspective but currently in early state of the development is the direction of neurosimulation based models that could be used for the robotic system control (exoskeleton) or as neuroprosthesis as the part of closed loop system for example projects simulating the spinal cord, where I can see interesting future opportunities both in medicine and robotics.