Teleoperated Locomotion for Biobot between Japan and Bangladesh

Abstract

Biobot-based insects have been investigated so far for various applications such as search and rescue operations, environmental monitoring, and discovering the environment. These applications need a strong international collaboration to complete the tasks. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, most people could not easily move from one country to another because of the travel ban. In addition, controlling biobots is challenging because only experts can operate the cockroach behavior with and without stimulated response. In order to solve this issue, we proposed a user-friendly teleoperation user interface (UI) to monitor and control the biobot between Japan and Bangladesh without onsite operation by experts. This study applied Madagascar hissing cockroaches (MHC) as a biobot hybrid robot. A multithreading algorithm was implemented to run multiple parallel computations concurrently on the UI. Virtual network computing (VNC) was implemented on the teleoperation UI as remote communication for streaming real-time video from Japan to Bangladesh and sending remote commands from Bangladesh to Japan. In the experiments, a remote operator successfully steered the biobot to follow a predetermined path through a developed teleoperation UI with a time delay of 275 ms. The proposed interactive and intuitive UI enables a promising and reliable system for teleoperated biobots between two remote countries.

Feedback control of automatic navigation for cyborg cockroach without external motion capture system

“…A platinum wire (A-M systems) with a diameter of 0.127 mm was implemented as the electrode and inserted into the antennae, thorax, and cerci. We used the same procedure from the previous study for implanting electrodes into cockroaches [ 2 , 24 ]. A copper wire (32 AWG) was utilized as a wire connector between the platinum electrode and the female header pin.…”

“…This hybrid cm-scale robot has excellent locomotion and agility in an unknown environment. Cockroaches have been selected as the main platform of hybrid robots due to their size and locomotion [ [1] , [2] , [3] , [4] , [5] , [6] , [7] , [8] , [9] , [10] ]. If overturned, they can self-right on the ground and climb on the obstacle [ 11 ].…”

“…To overcome these issues, researchers have studied how to optimize the cockroach hybrid robot motion by implementing certain algorithms and inertial measuring unit (IMU) sensor. IMU is the most widely used sensor applied to insect hybrid robots to capture the kinematics of the hybrid robots [ 1 , 2 , 4 , 9 , [17] , [18] , [19] , [20] , [21] , [22] , [23] , [24] ]. The previous study implemented predictive feedback control based on the linear and angular velocity obtained from the IMU sensor to the cockroach hybrid robot.…”

“…The cockroach will likely go to the corner and stay still for a certain period. Previous studies utilized simple manual obstacle avoidance operations by turning left/right using antenna stimulation to avoid the obstacle in front of the cyborg [ 2 , 25 ]. A camera/motion capture system has been implemented as a feedback position sensor for the autonomous navigation of the cyborg cockroach for path following trajectory in the free space area [ 10 , 20 ].…”

Intelligent Insect–Computer Hybrid Robot: Installing Innate Obstacle Negotiation and Onboard Human Detection onto Cyborg Insect

“…The insects are also targeted as application platforms for latest advancements in fabrication technology such as miniature camera implementation on living insect. [38] However, all recent studies of hybrid robots demonstrated operations of insect in an obstacle-free environment [39,40] or manually avoiding obstacle by navigating in a preplanned path, [41][42][43] despite having a natural obstacle negotiation ability that is beneficial for search-and-rescue missions. An onboard human-detection algorithm for such a system has not been thoroughly studied as well.…”