Scientists Build a Simple Gel ‘Brain’ That Learns How to Play Pong Better
A little blob of squishy transparent gel can not only play the video game Pong, it can get better at it over time.
When interfaced with an adapted version of the game via an electrode array, the simple polymer hydrogel displayed a measurable increase in accuracy, resulting in longer rallies. It’s a finding that demonstrates the ability to remember, even in a very basic material.
The gel is, of course, very far from an artificial brain, but its newly discovered ability suggests some tantalizing new avenues for research and development.
“Our research shows that even very simple materials can exhibit complex, adaptive behaviors typically associated with living systems or sophisticated AI,” explains biomedical engineer Yoshikatsu Hayashi of the University of Reading in the UK.
“This opens up exciting possibilities for developing new types of ‘smart’ materials that can learn and adapt to their environment.”
The hydrogel in question is based on an electro-active polymer, or EAP. These are polymers that change their size or shape when an electric current is applied, and they’re commonly used for actuators and sensors as a sort of artificial muscle.
Back in 2022, a team of researchers demonstrated that a glob of human brain cells in a dish can be taught to play Pong by giving it feedback that tells the glob whether it succeeded in hitting a simple pixel “ball” with a pixel “paddle”.
Biomedical engineers Vincent Strong, William Holderbaum, and Hayashi, all at the University of Reading, wanted to explore whether a similar learning ability could be demonstrated in something far simpler than human brain tissue.
EAP hydrogel was the logical test subject. Ions – particles that have a charge – within the hydrogel’s matrix of crosslinked polymer chains move when an electric current is applied, which causes the gel to change shape.
Previously, Hayashi and another team demonstrated how this phenomenon can be exploited to make hydrogel beat in sync with a pacemaker, like the way a heart beats, expanding and contracting.
They noticed in the course of this research that their polyacrylamide hydrogel retained a “memory” of the beating, even after the researchers stopped the pacemaker.
“The rate at which the hydrogel de-swells takes much longer than the time it takes for it to swell in the first place, meaning that the ions’ next motion is influenced by its previous motion, which is sort of like memory occurring,” Strong explains.
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Tom
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Maybe one day it will be able to beat The Dummy.
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Howdy
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It’s alive – it’s alive!!!
“The rate at which the hydrogel de-swells takes much longer than the time it takes for it to swell in the first place, meaning that the ions’ next motion is influenced by its previous motion, which is sort of like memory occurring,”
Sort of like? It means that does it, really? So engine run-on is like memory occurring, a bouncing ball even, or is there some other influence at play?
Don’t jump to the obvious because you can’t see past it.
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