NOMAD Project
(Neurally Organized Mobile Adaptive Device)

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Over the past decade, researchers at The Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, California, have designed a series of theoretical models and Devices to investigate how the brain controls behavior. This series is called the Darwin series, after the famous biologist who conceived of the theory of natural selection. The Darwin series consists of realistically designed nervous systems, and a defined body structure that is exposed to the environment containing stimuli and events.

One example is NOMAD, for Neurally Organized Mobile Adaptive Device, an autonomous "creature" about the size of a dog, which is used as a tool to help study the brain. Unlike a robot, NOMAD starts out naive and learns from its own experience. NOMAD is connected to a realistic model of a brain, which is simulated on a network of powerful computers. All of NOMAD's behaviors are controlled by the activity of its brain cells, allowing researchers a unique window into how the human brain may work. NOMAD can interact with its environment in several ways: by sensing light, sound and taste, and by moving around and grabbing objects.
body camera
wheels gripper

As NOMAD roams around the lab, the images it captures through a video camera are sent through a wireless connection to its brain running inside a computer. The brain tries to make sense of the image through the activity of its neurons. Then the brain triggers a motor command, which is relayed to NOMAD's body.
When the researchers activate NOMAD, it begins a "run" with a naive brain. It has an inborn preference for light and a predisposition for a certain taste, but no other experience or programming.
As it explores its environment, NOMAD will encounter a small black block with a blob or stripe on the top. Since it is attracted to light, it will steer toward the block and pick it up. When it grabs the striped block with its metal gripper, it gets a charge of current. In the simulated brain, this conductivity is registered as good taste. Blocks with blobs, on the other hand, do not give a charge and correspond to bad taste. As NOMAD's gripper holds the block, the brain simulation associates the taste of the block with the pattern that it sees. Through the brain simulation, NOMAD not only learns what each block looks like, but which blocks taste good and which taste bad. After learning these things, it will no longer pick up the bad tasting blocks. It will approach the blocks, and after seeing the pattern of the blocks, NOMAD will now remember the associated taste. If NOMAD thinks it tastes good it will pick up the block and if it thinks it tastes bad it will avoid the block.
To date, The Institute's work has yielded revealing insights, e.g. into the importance of self-generated movement in the aquisition of perceptual capability and the almost universal role of value systems in adaptaion and learning.
The Institute's researchers believe that it is impossible to study the brain or a part of it in isolation. Feeding static data to the brain simulation running on a computer does not capture the complexity of the processing that the brain is required to do. Using NOMAD we can perform tests with all of the noise and sophistication of the real world and still record the activity from the entire brain, something that is extremely difficult to do with live animals.
What NOMAD "does"
  • NOMAD navigates through its environment
  • NOMAD senses obstacles and avoids bumping into them
  • NOMAD approaches objects after "seeing" them from a distance
  • NOMAD grabs objects with its gripper
  • NOMAD tastes objects
  • NOMAD rejects or avoids objects that it has learned will taste bad
For more information, contact Jeff Krichmar