Bristol Robotics Laboratory, University of the West of England, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol BS16 1QD, UK.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2011 Nov 12;366(1581):3085-96. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2011.0164.
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.
主动触须触觉可用于替代或补充计算机视觉等感觉系统，从而提高移动机器人的感觉能力。本文描述了如何从生物学中汲取灵感，为移动机器人平台设计并整合了类似触须的传感器阵列，包括其形态和控制方式。这项工作有两个动机：首先，构建一个物理平台，用于模拟和测试关于触须触觉的神经行为学假说；其次，利用在生物模拟中观察到的控制策略和形态，从人工触须阵列中最大限度地获取高质量和高数量的触觉信息。我们描述了一种新型触须机器人 Shrewbot 的设计，它配备了具有仿生结构的可单独控制的触须和受神经行为学启发的触须刷动模式生成机制。然后，我们展示了触须阵列的形态如何塑造机器人头部周围的感觉表面，并展示了主动触觉控制对机器人可获取的感觉信息的影响。我们表明，采用受生物启发的、低延迟的触须节律运动的电机控制，以响应接触诱导的刺激，有助于限制感觉范围，同时最大化触须接触的数量。机器人实验还表明，主动触觉控制的感觉后果可以在仿生机器人中进行有用的研究。
