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Whiskerbot: A Robotic Active Touch System Modeled on the Rat Whisker Sensory System

Bristol Robotics Laboratory, University of the West of England and University of Bristol, UK, martin.pearson{at}brl.ac.uk

Anthony G. Pipe

Bristol Robotics Laboratory, University of the West of England and University of Bristol, UK

Chris Melhuish

Bristol Robotics Laboratory, University of the West of England and University of Bristol, UK

Ben Mitchinson

Adaptive Behaviour Research Group, Psychology Department, Sheffield University, UK

Tony J. Prescott

Adaptive Behaviour Research Group, Psychology Department, Sheffield University, UK

The Whiskerbot project is a collaborative project between robotics engineers, computational neuroscientists and ethologists, aiming to build a biologically inspired robotic implementation of the rodent whisker sensory system. The morphology and mechanics of the large whiskers (macro-vibrissae) have been modeled, as have the neural structures that constitute the rodent central nervous system responsible for macro-vibrissae sensory processing. There are two principal motivations for this project. First, by implementing an artificial whisker sensory system controlled using biologically plausible neural networks we hope to test existing models more thoroughly and develop new hypotheses for vibrissal sensory processing. Second, the sensory mode of tactile whiskers could be useful for general mobile robotic sensory deployment. In this article the robotic platform that has been built is detailed as well as some of the experiments that have been conducted to test the neural control algorithms and architectures inspired from neuroethological observations to mediate adaptive behaviors.

Key Words: vibrissal active touch • computational neuroethology • bio-inspired robotics • field programmable gate array neural processing • sensorimotor control

Adaptive Behavior, Vol. 15, No. 3, 223-240 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1059712307082089


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