Contributors:
Bristol robotics laboratory
Biomimetic and neuro-robotics group
Active Touch Laboratory
Project Manager and Lead Engineer for this project is Ben Mitchinson
bwtt.sourceforge.net
Article "Rodent-like robots - BIOTACT attempts to mechanically replicate the impressive whiskers of the rat"
by Kyle Sherer
February 21, 2008
"A General Classifier of Whisker Data Using Stationary Naive Bayes: Application to BIOTACT Robots"
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
Article "Biomimetic vibrissal sensing for robots"
by Martin J. Pearson, Ben Mitchinson, J. Charles Sullivan, Anthony G. Pipe, Tony J. Prescott
November 12, 2011
Article "Robo Rat"
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
Article "How rats can see in the dark: Rodents use whiskers in the same way humans use their hands to feel their way around"
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
https://youtu.be/ksfZxMi5ld8
A robot inspired by the Etruscan shrew called Shrewbot
Uploaded on Jan 19, 2012
Quote:
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.
https://youtu.be/J9NYcJUlYR0
Robot Whiskers
Published on Jan 14, 2014
Quote:
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.
https://youtu.be/TUFG8AsWHFQ
Visual-Tactile sensory map calibration of a biomimetic whiskered robot
Uploaded on May 20, 2016
Quote:
“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.