Imagine a supercomputer that can sense its environment and react accordingly just like a human. That's what IBM is working on, and the company says it's making steady progress.

IBM's engineers were in Washington recently to demonstrate their technology in front of U.S. lawmakers. The technology could help build computer chips that process data in a similar way as the human brain, according to Dharmendra Modha, IBM's chief scientist for brain-inspired computing.

One of the amazing capabilities of our brains is that we can process information efficiently, thanks to billions of neurons and synapses in our brains.

With funding from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and partnerships from national laboratories, IBM set out to mimic the structure of our brains in its design of computer chips. The company announced a prototype in August, 2014.

The current chip runs with 1 million programmable processor-neurons. IBM plans to build a chip with 256 million processor-neurons by the end of next year. It's still a long way to go before the technology reaches the human-brain level of nearly 100 billion neurons.

IBM's long-term goal is to build a "brain in a box" that is capable of processing big data while consuming less than 1 kilowatt of power.

Modha says the technology is potential in a variety of fields, such as disaster response, biosecurity checks and even space travel.