Journal ArticleDOI
From insect vision to robot vision
TLDR
The understanding of some invertebrate sensory-motor systems has now reached a level able to provide valuable design hints and this approach brings into prominence the mutual constraints in the designs of a sensory and a motor system, in both living and non-living ambulatory creatures.Abstract:
Airborne insects are miniature w ing-flapping aircraft the visually guided manoeuvres of which depend on analogue, ‘fly-by-wire’ controls. The front-end of their visuomotor system consists of a pair of com pound eyes which are masterpieces of integrated optics and neural design. They rely on an array of passive sensors driving an orderly analogue neural network. We explored in concrete terms how motion-detecting neurons might possibly be used to solve navigational tasks involving obstacle avoidance in a creature whose wings are exquisitely guided by eyes with a poor spatial resolution. We designed, simulated, and built a complete terrestrial creature which moves about and avoids obstacles solely by evaluating the relative motion between itself and the environment. The compound eye uses an array of elementary motion detectors (emds) as smart, passive ranging sensors. Like its physiological counterpart, the visuomotor system is based on analogue, continuous-time processing and does not make use of conventional computers. It uses hardly any memory to adjust the robot’s heading in real time via a local and intermittent visuomotor feedback loop. This paper shows that the understanding of some invertebrate sensory-motor systems has now reached a level able to provide valuable design hints. Our approach brings into prominence the mutual constraints in the designs of a sensory and a motor system, in both living and non-living ambulatory creatures.read more
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Journal ArticleDOI
Digital cameras with designs inspired by the arthropod eye
Young Min Song,Y. Xie,Viktor Malyarchuk,Jianliang Xiao,Inhwa Jung,Ki Joong Choi,Zhuangjian Liu,Hyunsung Park,Chaofeng Lü,Chaofeng Lü,Rak-Hwan Kim,Rui Li,Rui Li,Kenneth B. Crozier,Yonggang Huang,John A. Rogers +15 more
TL;DR: The devices combine elastomeric compound optical elements with deformable arrays of thin silicon photodetectors into integrated sheets that can be elastically transformed from the planar geometries in which they are fabricated to hemispherical shapes for integration into apposition cameras.
The e-puck, a Robot Designed for Education in Engineering
Francesco Mondada,Michael Bonani,Xavier Raemy,Jim Pugh,Christopher M. Cianci,Adam Klaptocz,Stéphane Magnenat,Jean-Christophe Zufferey,Dario Floreano,Alcherio Martinoli +9 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the e-puck robot design is presented, which specifically targets engineering education at university level and can be used in a large spectrum of teaching activities, not strictly related to robotics.
Journal ArticleDOI
The brain has a body: adaptive behavior emerges from interactions of nervous system, body and environment.
Hillel J. Chiel,Randall D. Beer +1 more
TL;DR: Computational neuroethology, which jointly models neural control and periphery of animals, is a promising methodology for understanding adaptive behavior.
Journal ArticleDOI
A mobile robot employing insect strategies for navigation
TL;DR: Inspired by the insect’s navigation system, mechanisms for path integration and visual piloting that were successfully employed on the mobile robot Sahabot 2 are developed.
Journal ArticleDOI
Materials that couple sensing, actuation, computation, and communication
M. A. McEvoy,Nikolaus Correll +1 more
TL;DR: Robotic materials can enable smart composites that autonomously change their shape, stiffness, or physical appearance in a fully programmable way, extending the functionality of classical “smart materials.”
References
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TL;DR: A new architecture for controlling mobile robots is described, building a robust and flexible robot control system that has been used to control a mobile robot wandering around unconstrained laboratory areas and computer machine rooms.
Journal ArticleDOI
A robust layered control system for a mobile robot
TL;DR: In this paper, a new architecture for controlling mobile robots is described, which is made up of asynchronous modules that communicate over low-bandwidth channels, each module is an instance of a fairly simple computational machine.
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Receptive fields of single neurones in the cat's striate cortex
David H. Hubel,Torsten N. Wiesel +1 more
TL;DR: The present investigation, made in acute preparations, includes a study of receptive fields of cells in the cat's striate cortex, which resembled retinal ganglion-cell receptive fields, but the shape and arrangement of excitatory and inhibitory areas differed strikingly from the concentric pattern found in retinalganglion cells.