Tuesday, Jan. 23rd 2018

It Takes Two Neurons To Ride a Bicycle ^{link →}

Past attempts to get computers to ride bicycles have required an inordinate amount of learning time (1700 practice rides for a reinforcement learning approach [1], while still failing to be able to ride in a straight line), or have required an algebraic analysis of the exact equations of motion for the specific bicycle to be controlled.

Mysteriously, humans do not need to do either of these when learning to ride a bicycle. Here we present a two-neuron network that can ride a bicycle in a desired direction (for example, towards a desired goal or along a desired path), which may be chosen or changed at run time.

Updated on Saturday, Feb. 15th 2020