Templates and Anchors for Antenna-Based Wall Following in Cockroaches and Robots

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 antennabased 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 wall-following template--the simplest model that captures a behavior--that a cockroach antenna-based controller requires 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 proce...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2008
• Where: TROB
• Authors: J. Lee, S. N. Sponberg, Owen Y. Loh, Andrew G. Lamperski, Robert J. Full, Noah J. Cowan
• Keywords: Cockroach, Cockroach Antenna-based Controller, Robotic, TROB 2008