Ando Noriyasu, Kanzaki Ryohei
Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, 4-6-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8904, Japan.
Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, 4-6-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8904, Japan.
Arthropod Struct Dev. 2017 Sep;46(5):723-735. doi: 10.1016/j.asd.2017.02.003. Epub 2017 Mar 18.
The use of mobile robots is an effective method of validating sensory-motor models of animals in a real environment. The well-identified insect sensory-motor systems have been the major targets for modeling. Furthermore, mobile robots implemented with such insect models attract engineers who aim to avail advantages from organisms. However, directly comparing the robots with real insects is still difficult, even if we successfully model the biological systems, because of the physical differences between them. We developed a hybrid robot to bridge the gap. This hybrid robot is an insect-controlled robot, in which a tethered male silkmoth (Bombyx mori) drives the robot in order to localize an odor source. This robot has the following three advantages: 1) from a biomimetic perspective, the robot enables us to evaluate the potential performance of future insect-mimetic robots; 2) from a biological perspective, the robot enables us to manipulate the closed-loop of an onboard insect for further understanding of its sensory-motor system; and 3) the robot enables comparison with insect models as a reference biological system. In this paper, we review the recent works regarding insect-controlled robots and discuss the significance for both engineering and biology.
使用移动机器人是在真实环境中验证动物感觉运动模型的有效方法。已明确的昆虫感觉运动系统一直是建模的主要目标。此外，采用此类昆虫模型的移动机器人吸引了旨在从生物体中获取优势的工程师。然而，即便我们成功对生物系统进行了建模，由于机器人与真实昆虫之间存在物理差异，直接将二者进行比较仍很困难。我们开发了一种混合机器人来弥合这一差距。这种混合机器人是一种由昆虫控制的机器人，其中一只被系住的雄性家蚕驱动机器人以定位气味源。该机器人具有以下三个优点：1）从仿生学角度来看，该机器人使我们能够评估未来仿昆虫机器人的潜在性能；2）从生物学角度来看，该机器人使我们能够操纵机载昆虫的闭环系统，以进一步了解其感觉运动系统；3）该机器人能够与作为参考生物系统的昆虫模型进行比较。在本文中，我们回顾了有关昆虫控制机器人的近期研究工作，并讨论了其对工程学和生物学的意义。
