Shrewbot, BIOTACT project (BIOmimetic Technology for vibrissal Active Touch)

[Airicist]

Contributors:

Bristol robotics laboratory (https://pr.ai/showthread.php?6036)

Biomimetic and neuro-robotics group (https://pr.ai/showthread.php?12172)

Active Touch Laboratory (https://pr.ai/showthread.php?12078)

Project Manager and Lead Engineer for this project is Ben Mitchinson (http://www.abrg.group.shef.ac.uk/people/mitch)

bwtt.sourceforge.net (http://bwtt.sourceforge.net)

Article "Rodent-like robots - BIOTACT attempts to mechanically replicate the impressive whiskers of the rat (https://newatlas.com/rodent-like-robots-biotact-attempts-to-mechanically-replicate-the-impr/8849)"

by Kyle Sherer
February 21, 2008

[Airicist]

"A General Classifier of Whisker Data Using Stationary Naive Bayes: Application to BIOTACT Robots (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-642-23232-9_2)"

by Nathan F. Lepora, Charles W. Fox, Mat Evans, Ben Mitchinson, Asma Motiwala, J. Charlie Sullivan, Martin J. Pearson, Jason Welsby, Tony Pipe, Kevin Gurney, Tony J. Prescott
September 2, 2011

[Airicist]

Article "Biomimetic vibrissal sensing for robots (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3172604)"

by Martin J. Pearson, Ben Mitchinson, J. Charles Sullivan, Anthony G. Pipe, Tony J. Prescott
November 12, 2011

[Airicist]

Article "Robo Rat (https://www.the-scientist.com/notebook/robo-rat-41166)"
More-realistic whiskered robots are better able to navigate dark or dusty environments, while providing insights into rodent sensory processing.

by Jef Akst
April 1, 2012

[Airicist]

Article "How rats can see in the dark: Rodents use whiskers in the same way humans use their hands to feel their way around (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2685030/How-rats-dark-Rodents-use-whiskers-way-humans-use-hands-feel-way-around.html)"
Can deliberately change how they sense their environment using their facial whiskers in new environments
Show that rats are cleverer than previously thought

by Mark Prigg
July 8, 2014

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/ksfZxMi5ld8

A robot inspired by the Etruscan shrew called Shrewbot

Uploaded on Jan 19, 2012


As featured on BBC 1 - The One Show, 20 January 2012

The Etruscan shrew is nocturnal, relying on its whiskers to find, track and capture its prey - often the same size as itself. The efficiency of this tiny creature has inspired scientists to look at ways of replicating the shrew's whiskers to enable robots to find their way around without the use of vision.

The Shrewbot has been developed at Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL) in collaboration with the University of Sheffield Active Touch Laboratory as part of the BIOTACT project, Professor Tony Pipe (UWE Bristol) and Professor Tony Prescott (University of Sheffield) are working on the Shrewbot project with a number of partners.

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/J9NYcJUlYR0

Robot Whiskers

Published on Jan 14, 2014


Building a computer model of the human brain isn't enough for cognitive roboticist Murray Shanahan. Meet "Shrewbot," the robot that uses whiskers to get around, patterned on those of the Etruscan shrew.

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/TUFG8AsWHFQ

Visual-Tactile sensory map calibration of a biomimetic whiskered robot

Uploaded on May 20, 2016


“Visual-Tactile Sensory Map Calibration of a Biomimetic Whiskered Robot,” by Tareq Assaf, Emma D. Wilson, Sean Anderson, Paul Dean, John Porrill, and Martin J. Pearson from the University of Bristol, University of the West of England, and University of Sheffield, U.K. Presented at ICRA 2016.