Robohub.org
 

Oldest known cardiovascular system already brain-focused | ScienceMag


by
09 April 2014



share this:

“The brain was well supplied with looping blood vessels, which extended branches into the arthropod’s alienlike eyestalks and antennae and rivaled the complexity of today’s crustaceans. From this Gordian architecture, the researchers can now speculate about the critter’s lifestyle. Its brain required abundant oxygen, so it presumably did a fair amount of thinking.”

John Payne‘s insight:

As if to underscore the importance of pairing information processing with mobility, this 520 million year old cardiovascular system was already highly developed for providing oxygen to the brain, suggesting that these creatures were also spending a disproportionate percentage of their energy budgets on correlating sensory input, a situation which could only arise if it somehow provided a significant evolutionary advantage.  It may be a stretch to generalize this to robotics, but you can judge for yourself whether providing the resources necessary to integrate data from disparate sources in a timely manner confers an  advantage worth the expense and effort.

See on news.sciencemag.org




John Payne

            AUAI is supported by:



Subscribe to Robohub newsletter on substack



Related posts :

AI agents create virtual playgrounds to help robots get crucial training data

  07 Aug 2026
“SceneSmith” system uses collaborative AI agents to create realistic 3D environments of places like kitchens, hotels, and living rooms, where robots can simulate everyday chores.

Robots in society, business and culture: July 2026

A round up of robotics stories in a new monthly series from IEEE RAS.

Simulated zebrafish and a vision-equipped robotic fish reveal how the body shapes brain circuits

Researchers look to the fish brain to create a robotic zebrafish that can autonomously swim upstream.

Researchers develop modular nanorobot

  31 Jul 2026
A team at the University of Basel has developed a versatile nanorobot with propulsion and payload modules.

Surviving the paper deluge: a one-year study in learning from demonstration

With the explosion of robotics research, staying current in fields like Learning from Demonstration is a monumental challenge.

Soft robotic heart offers new way to study disease and test life-saving devices

Researchers have developed a soft robotic model of the human heart that can mimic disease and provide a realistic environment for testing the next generation of cardiac devices.

A mini robot to simplify dental treatment

  24 Jul 2026
Researchers have developed a miniature dental robot that could one day automatically prepare teeth for crowns.

Pressure-free growing robots for soft medical robotics

A Q&A with the best paper award winner at RoboSoft.



AUAI is supported by:







Subscribe to Robohub newsletter on substack




 















©2026.05 - Association for the Understanding of Artificial Intelligence