Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

Biomimetic vibrissal sensing for robots

Charles Sullivan, J.; Pearson, Martin; Sullivan, John Charles; Mitchinson, Ben; Pipe, Anthony G.; Prescott, Tony J.

Biomimetic vibrissal sensing for robots Thumbnail


Authors

J. Charles Sullivan

John Charles Sullivan

Ben Mitchinson

Tony J. Prescott



Abstract

Active vibrissal touch can be used to replace or to supplement sensory systems such as computer vision and, therefore, improve the sensory capacity of mobile robots. This paper describes how arrays of whisker-like touch sensors have been incorporated onto mobile robot platforms taking inspiration from biology for their morphology and control. There were two motivations for this work: first, to build a physical platform on which to model, and therefore test, recent neuroethological hypotheses about vibrissal touch; second, to exploit the control strategies and morphology observed in the biological analogue to maximize the quality and quantity of tactile sensory information derived from the artificial whisker array. We describe the design of a new whiskered robot, Shrewbot, endowed with a biomimetic array of individually controlled whiskers and a neuroethologically inspired whisking pattern generation mechanism. We then present results showing how the morphology of the whisker array shapes the sensory surface surrounding the robot's head, and demonstrate the impact of active touch control on the sensory information that can be acquired by the robot. We show that adopting bio-inspired, low latency motor control of the rhythmic motion of the whiskers in response to contact-induced stimuli usefully constrains the sensory range, while also maximizing the number of whisker contacts. The robot experiments also demonstrate that the sensory consequences of active touch control can be usefully investigated in biomimetic robots. © 2011 The Royal Society.

Journal Article Type Review
Publication Date Jan 1, 2011
Deposit Date Feb 20, 2013
Publicly Available Date Mar 27, 2016
Journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Print ISSN 1471-2970
Publisher Royal Society, The
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 366
Issue 1581
Pages 3085-3096
DOI https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2011.0164
Keywords vibrissa, whisker, active touch, robot, biomimetic, whisking pattern generator
Public URL https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/958517
Publisher URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2011.0164
Contract Date Mar 27, 2016

Files






You might also like



Downloadable Citations