WANT TO MAKE ROBOTS MORE AGILE? TAKE A LESSON FROM A RAT

Summary from the TLDR newsletter

A group of researchers have collaborated with scientists at Google's DeepMind AI lab to build a biomechanically realistic digital model of a rat. They trained an artificial neural network to control a virtual body in a physics simulator using high-resolution data recorded from real rats. This resulted in a virtual rat with an artificial brain that can move around virtual environments like a real rodent. The research could provide convenient and fully transparent models for studying neural circuits and see how such circuits are compromised in disease.