This entry is submitted by Gloria Gamat, via Creative Reporter.Computer Science's most intractable problem is teaching a machine to sense its environment. However, a European project is now looking at nature to take up that challenge by combining streams of sensory data to produce an adaptive, composite impression of surroundings in near real-time.

The team is composed of electronic engineers, computer scientists, neuroscientists, physicists, and biologists. It looked at basic neural models for perception and then sought to replicate aspects of these in silicon.

"The objective was to study sensory fusion in biological systems and then translate that knowledge into the creation of intelligent computational machines," says Martin McGinnity, Professor of Intelligent Systems Engineering and Director of the Intelligent Systems Engineering Laboratory (ISEL) at the University of Ulster's Magee Campus and coordinator of the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) initiative-funded SENSEMAKER project of the IST programme.

SENSEMAKER took its inspiration from nature by trying to replicate aspects of the brain's neural processes, which capture sensory data from eyes, ears and touch, and then combines these senses to present a whole picture of the scene or its environment.

News and Photo source: IST ResultsAbout Gloria Gamat: Gloria is a proud single-mom to Raine (Rainier Brando: born 29 December 2002) and a Chemist and a single mom. Gloria also blogs about motherhood at EMothersOnline and about life and travel in the Philippines at The Philippine Culture Blog and at Pinoy Travel Blog respectively.