Sugasawa Shoko, Webb Barbara, Healy Susan D
Centre for Biological Diversity, Harold Mitchell Building, School of Biology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews KY16 9TH, UK.
School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, 10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh EH8 9AB, UK.
Proc Biol Sci. 2021 Mar 31;288(1947):20203184. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2020.3184. Epub 2021 Mar 17.
Our current understanding of manipulation is based on primate hands, resulting in a detailed but narrow perspective of ways to handle objects. Although most other animals lack hands, they are still capable of flexible manipulation of diverse objects, including food and nest materials, and depend on dexterity in object handling to survive and reproduce. Birds, for instance, use their bills and feet to forage and build nests, while insects carry food and construct nests with their mandibles and legs. Bird bills and insect mandibles are much simpler than a primate hand, resembling simple robotic grippers. A better understanding of manipulation in these and other species would provide a broader comparative perspective on the origins of dexterity. Here we contrast data from primates, birds and insects, describing how they sense and grasp objects, and the neural architectures that control manipulation. Finally, we outline techniques for collecting comparable manipulation data from animals with diverse morphologies and describe the practical applications of studying manipulation in a wide range of species, including providing inspiration for novel designs of robotic manipulators.
我们目前对操作的理解基于灵长类动物的手，这导致了对物体处理方式的详细但狭隘的观点。尽管大多数其他动物没有手，但它们仍然能够灵活地操作各种物体，包括食物和筑巢材料，并且依靠物体处理的灵巧性来生存和繁殖。例如，鸟类用它们的喙和脚觅食和筑巢，而昆虫用它们的下颚和腿搬运食物和建造巢穴。鸟喙和昆虫下颚比灵长类动物的手简单得多，类似于简单的机器人抓手。更好地理解这些物种和其他物种的操作将为灵巧性的起源提供更广泛的比较视角。在这里，我们对比了来自灵长类动物、鸟类和昆虫的数据，描述了它们如何感知和抓取物体，以及控制操作的神经结构。最后，我们概述了从具有不同形态的动物收集可比操作数据的技术，并描述了研究广泛物种操作的实际应用，包括为机器人操纵器的新颖设计提供灵感。
