SUMMARYAnimals can expend energy to acquire sensory information by emitting signals and/or moving sensory structures. We propose that the energy from locomotion itself could permit control of a sensor, whereby animals use the energy from movement to reconfigure a passive sensor. We investigated high-speed, antenna-mediated tactile navigation in the cockroach Periplaneta americana. We discovered that the passive antennal flagellum can assume two principal mechanical states, such that the tip is either projecting backward or forward. Using a combination of behavioral and robotic experiments, we demonstrate that a switch in the antenna's state is mediated via the passive interactions between the sensor and its environment, and this switch strongly influences wall-tracking control. When the tip of the antenna is projected backward, the animals maintain greater body-to-wall distance with fewer body collisions and less leg-wall contact than when the tip is projecting forward. We hypothesized that distally pointing mechanosensory hairs at the tip of the antenna mediate the switch in state by interlocking with asperities in the wall surface. To test this hypothesis, we performed laser ablation of chemo-mechanosensory hairs and added artificial hairs to a robotic antenna. In both the natural and artificial systems, the presence of hairs categorically increased an antenna's probability of switching state. Antennal hairs, once thought to only play a role in sensing, are sufficient for mechanically reconfiguring the state of the entire antenna when coupled with forward motion. We show that the synergy between antennal mechanics, locomotion and the environment simplifies tactile sensing.
Abstract-The interplay between robotics and neuromechanics facilitates discoveries in both fields: nature provides roboticists with design ideas, while robotics research elucidates critical features that confer performance advantages to biological systems. Here, we explore a system particularly well suited to exploit the synergies between biology and robotics: high-speed antenna-based wall following of the American cockroach (Periplaneta americana). Our approach integrates mathematical and hardware modeling with behavioral and neurophysiological experiments. Specifically, we corroborate a prediction from a previously reported wallfollowing template-the simplest model that captures a behaviorthat a cockroach antenna-based controller requires the rate of approach to a wall in addition to distance, e.g., in the form of a proportional-derivative (PD) controller. Neurophysiological experiments reveal that important features of the wall-following controller emerge at the earliest stages of sensory processing, namely in the antennal nerve. Furthermore, we embed the template in a robotic platform outfitted with a bio-inspired antenna. Using this system, we successfully test specific PD gains (up to a scale) fitted to the cockroach behavioral data in a "real-world" setting, lending further credence to the surprisingly simple notion that a cockroach might implement a PD controller for wall following. Finally, we embed the template in a simulated lateral-leg-spring (LLS) model using the center of pressure as the control input. Importantly, the same PD gains fitted to cockroach behavior also stabilize wall following for the LLS model.
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Abstract-It may come as no surprise that a simple "planar unicycle" (or "skate") model can successfully follow a wall at high speed under PD-control. What would be surprising is that such a simple control mechanism may underly the control of one of Nature's fastest terrestrial insects, the American cockroach. For this paper, we implemented the same controller (up to scale) believed to govern cockroach wall following to successfully control two models of the cockroach: a differentialdrive mobile robot with a flexible artificial antenna and a lateral leg spring model with moving center of pressure as the control input. These physical and numerical experiments demonstrate the sufficiency of the cockroach's putative controller in a realworld setting with unmodeled effects, and suggest how the nervous system might guide leg placement in response to sensory stimuli. This hierarchy of models may prove useful in generating prescriptive hypotheses for biological testing and hence elucidating the general principles that underly sensorguided animal locomotion.
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