Robots programmed with this ability are now used extensively in industry. Quick adaptation to new situations makes them useful in fields beyond robotics. The field called adaptive nonlinear control ultimately may be applied to monitor chemical processes, nuclear reactors, aircraft and even stock markets. At the same time, he is teaming up with physiologists to explore how some of these mathematical ideas may mimic the function of the human brain. Like the brain, the system that makes WAM move is built of layer upon layer of commands, structured to interact with each other in a stable and purposeful fashion.
Evolution also works that way, tinkering with existing structures over millions of years.
Unlike Ken Griffey Jr., who doesn't need to do mathematics in his head to end up with the ball in his glove, WAM needs 65,000 lines of computer code to perform millions of calculations in fractions of a second. The human brain also juggles enormous amounts of data at lightning speed. One explanation for how it does this may be related to how it uses feedback from the eyes and other senses to tell it how close it is getting to the target. In particular, it may use some of the same mathematical shortcuts and representations found by robotics researchers to handle problems of stability, prediction and dealing with partial information. Development of the arm and control hardware was supported by the Office for Naval Research.