Can’t Toss that Old Mac? Transform it
For some people, deconstructing a computer can lead to a tangled mess of wires. Yet others are finding that by rewiring or recycling their Macs they're stumbling upon some very creative projects.
More than just information storage facilities, computers also function as brains. A group consisting of more than a dozen students from the Humboldt University of Berlin and the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Osnabruck set up an Artificial emotion Project part of artificial intelligence, to study how to create emotion in machines. One aspect of the project was to create a WALL-E-type robot, whose "brain" consisted of a Mac mini.
The MiniPsi thinks with its Mac mini brain as it scoots around while navigating its path and detecting light sources.
Joscha Bach, PhD, who is currently working in a technology startup company in Berlin, Germany, was part of the project. "We had developed components for a so-called cognitive architecture, called a 'MicroPsi'. This is a computer model of how humans perceive, act, have emotions and make plans. We looked for ways to test our software. And we came upon the idea of a fleet of little robots," he says. " MiniPsi was the logical title for the Mac mini version."
