Hugo DE GARIS, Michael KORKIN and Katsunori SHIMOHARA
ATR's "CAM-Brain Machine" (CBM) and
Artificial Brains
Abstract:This article introduces ATR's "CAM-Brain Machine" (CBM), an FPGA based piece of hardware which implements a genetic algorithm (GA) to evolve a cellular automata (CA) based neural network circuit module (of approximately 1000 neurons) in about a second (i.e. a complete run of a GA, with 10,000s of circuit growths and performance evaluations). Up to 32000 of these modules (each of which is evolved with a humanly specified function) can be downloaded into a large RAM space, and interconnected according to humanly specified artificial brain architectures. This RAM, containing an artificial brain with up to 40 million neurons, is then updated by the CBM at a rate of 150 Billion CA cells per second. Such speeds should enable real time control of robots and hopefully the birth of a new research field that we call "brain building". The first such artificial brain (to be built by ATR in 1999) will be used to control the behaviors of a life sized robot kitten called "Robokoneko".