Valentino Braitenberg | |
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Born | Valentino Braitenberg June 18, 1926 Bolzano, South Tyrol, Italy |
Died | September 9, 2011 Tübingen, Germany | (aged 85)
Alma mater | University of Innsbruck University of Rome |
Known for | Braitenberg Vehicles |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Neuroscience, cybernetics |
Institutions | University of Naples Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics University of Trento |
Academic advisors | Oskar Vogt Karl Kleist |
Doctoral students | Christof Koch Tobias Bonhoeffer |
Valentino Braitenberg (or Valentin von Braitenberg; 18 June 1926 – 9 September 2011) was an Italian neuroscientist and cyberneticist. He was a former director at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany.
His book Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology became famous in Robotics and among Psychologists, in which he described how hypothetical analog vehicles (a combination of sensors, actuators and their interconnections), though simple in design, can exhibit behaviors akin to aggression, love, foresight, and optimism.[1] These have come to be known as Braitenberg vehicles. His pioneering scientific work was concerned with the relationship between structures and functions of the brain.