WhiskerBot: A Robot Whisker System Modelled on the Rat Mystacial Vibrissae

This project has ended with the publication of the final (review) paper (see the "pubs" page). The public section of the site will remain (though it is no longer being updated) but the "members" section has been removed.

EPSRC Research Grant no. GR/S19639/01

This is a collaborative grant between the Adaptive Behaviour Research Group at The University of Sheffield and the Intelligent Autonomous Systems Laboratory at The University of the West of England.

Summary

There are many mobile robot applications for enclosed spaces such as ducting or piping systems, underground structures, and the interior of disaster sites, where current progress is seriously hampered by the lack of equipment for detailed, "close-quarters" sensing. This stands in interesting contrast to the sensory capabilities of a large group of mammals, the rodents, for whom a key sensory system is the mystacial vibrissae (facial whiskers) that provides these animals with a rich tactile description of local surface shapes and textures. We therefore propose to design and implement a multi-whisker sensory system, modelled on that of the rat, capable of supporting object detection and surface texture analysis. This design will primarily be based on computational models of whisker-related neural circuitry in the rat brain but will also exploit advanced Digital Signal Processing (DSP) techniques where useful and appropriate. Our implementation will be tested on a real mobile robot platform, with and without, assistance from other sensory modalities. The principal outcomes anticipated will be: a) the development of an active whisking array for use in mobile robotics, b) verification that an active whisking array can be usefully employed for environmental sensing in enclosed environments, c) the development of biomimetic models of sensory processing systems in the rat brain, and d) a significant advance in the state of our knowledge about this new sensory modality.

Objectives