Day 8 - Robotics with neuromorphic brains - Yulia Sandamirskaya, Catherine Schuman, Guido De croon, Paul Verschure
today's authors: Eleni Nisioti, Muhammad Aitsam Writing today's blog after lunch Today's session kicked off with Yulia Sandamiskaya saying that robotics has not been as major a theme as it deserves in the lectures of the conference. She followed up with a bold statement: "All neuroscientists should do robotics". This is motivated by the idea that, by taking into account the dynamics of robots that closely model reality, we can create neuroscientific models that are more true to the biology they try to represent. We, then, talked about a thought experiment from the work of Braitenberg (a major read according to many in the room) that exemplifies how you can reproduce real-like behavior with a minimal set of mechanisms (Yulia called this a physicist's approach) Picture a robot with two wheels that can turn left and right (like a tank), two motors controlling them and two sensors on its head that only receive the amount of light. There is a source of light