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Biomimetic robotics with a light touch

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Speaker:

Tony Prescott

Active Touch Laboratory, University of Sheffield. http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/psychology/research/groups/atlas

When animals, including humans, sense the world they usually do so in a purposive and information-seeking way that is often referred to as “active sensing”. We aim to understand biological active sensing systems in the domain of touch and to apply the insights gained to develop better sensory systems for robots. We have focused on the vibrissal (whisker) system of rodents which we are investigating through a combination of (i) ethological studies of behaving animals, (ii) computational neuroscience models of the neural circuits involved in vibrissal processing, and (iii) biomimetic robots embodying many of the characteristics of whiskered animals in their design and control. This talk will present converging lines of evidence, from these different research strands, for the importance of active control in tactile sensing. In particular, it will show that vibrissal sensing in animals takes advantage of control strategies that allow the exploration of surfaces using a light touch. Experiments with robots indicate that such strategies promote the extraction of surface invariants whilst limiting the dynamic range of touch signals in a manner that can boost sensitivity. These results will be used as an example to illustrate how experimental and robotic approaches can operate together to advance our understanding of complex behaving systems.

Video:

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