CHINESE RESEARCHERS MAKE HUGE SPLASH WITH AI-BASED RAT ROBOTS THAT MIMIC THE REAL THING
It was almost no surprise for me when I heard about the AI-based robot rats that some enterprising Chinese researchers developed. And to be fair, their work is pretty impressive, even in a realm of almost chronically impressive news when it comes to new technology. But I rapidly realized that they may want to rethink their goals, and rationale, for designing rat robots that can successfully interact with their real, mammalian counterparts. And they were successful, with real rats not seeming to understand that they were hanging out and playing with literal robots.
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RAT ROBOTS WERE ABLE TO INTERACT WITH REAL RATS WHO COULDN’T TELL THE DIFFERENCE
The researchers did their amazing work on rat robots at the Beijing Institute of Technology in China. Their goals were to create an automaton that used AI to learn how to imitate how rats behave to a degree that real rats would see them as… real rats. And while the researchers cheated perhaps a little by dousing their creations with rat urine to smell “right,” their AI-based robot rats were able to mimic behaviors like playful pouncing, social sniffing, nose touches and even aggressive pinning. That’s impressive. But one of the researchers suggested they could use their creations to provide social companionship for lab rats.
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IF AI CAN MIMIC RAT BEHAVIOR, THEN EVENTUALLY RAT ROBOTS COULD BE THE BEST PEST CONTROL
So yes, that’s a noble idea, and humane. I shudder to think about what lab animals go thru, rats included. And lab rats that can’t have contact with other rats because of exposure to diseases and the like would make a rat robots an amazing option. But I think the researchers need to rethink the range of their potential applications. Because while the hardware is limited for now, it won’t be too long before rat robots can go anywhere their natural counterparts can, even places that people never see.
And what better pest control could there be but rat robots that kill rats?
