Biomimetic Technology for Vibrissal Active Touch

Participating Organizations

University of Sheffield, UK (Co-ordinator); Humboldt University, Germany; International School for Advanced Studies, Italy; Weizmann Institute, Israel; University of the West of England, UK; University of Bristol, UK; Ecole Polytechnic de Lausanne, Switzerland; Ben Gurion University, Israel; Brain Vision Systems, Paris; Northwestern University, USA.

Abstract

Closing your eyes and exploring your surroundings with your fingertips provides an experience that is rich and immediate. While vision supplies information about distant objects, touch is invaluable in sensing the nearby environment. However, in designing intelligent, life-like machines, such as robots, the touch modality has been largely overlooked; current systems make only limited use of tactile sensors for simple tasks such as detecting physical contact. Biology, by contrast, reveals an abundant use of tactile sensing in the animal kingdom. Indeed, in nocturnal creatures, or those that inhabit poorly-lit places, touch is widely preferred to vision as a primary means of discovering the world. The tactile senses of many mammals are built around arrays of facial hairs known as "whiskers" or "vibrissae". In this project we will develop new technologies inspired by the whisker morphology and neural processing systems of two such tactile specialists: the Norwegian rat and the Etruscan shrew. These animals sweep their whiskers back and forth at high speeds in a controlled and feedback-sensitive manner. This active touch capacity allows them to: (i) maximise their intake of useful information; (ii) solve perceptual tasks such as determining the position, shape, and surface texture of encountered objects; (iii) encode tactile memories that allow recognition of familiar items; and (iv) track and capture prey animals using touch signals alone. Using our understanding of these natural vibrissal systems we will develop two biomimetic artefacts endowed with similar sensing capabilities: a novel active tactile sensing array, termed a BIOTACT sensor, with many hundreds of whisker-like sensing elements; and an autonomous whiskered robot that can seek-out, identify, and track fast-moving target objects. Overall, our project will bring about a step-change in the understanding of active touch sensing and in the use of whisker-like sensors in intelligent machines.

Project Website: http://www.biotact.org/