iRat: Intelligent Rat Animat Technology

This paper presents the iRat (intelligent Rat animat technology), a robot designed for robotic and neuroscience teams as a tool for studies in navigation, embodied cognition, and neuroscience research. The rat animat has capabilities comparable to the popular standard Pioneer DX robots but is an order of magnitude smaller in size and weight. The robot's volume is approximately 0.08m with a mass of 0.5kg and has visual, proximity, and odometry sensors, a differential drive, a 1 GHz x86 computer, and LCD navigation pad interface. To facilitate the value of the platform to a broader range of researchers, the robot uses the Player-Stage framework, and C/C++, Python, and MATLAB APIs have been tested in real time. Two studies of neural simulation for robot navigation have confirmed the rat animat's capabilities.

[1]  Richard Vaughan,et al.  Massively multi-robot simulation in stage , 2008, Swarm Intelligence.

[2]  W. Marsden.  I and J , 2012 .

[3]  David Ball,et al.  Spike-Time Robotics: A Rapid Response Circuit for a Robot that Seeks Temporally Varying Stimuli , 2010, Aust. J. Intell. Inf. Process. Syst..

[4]  Anthony G. Pipe,et al.  Whiskerbot: A Robotic Active Touch System Modeled on the Rat Whisker Sensory System , 2007, Adapt. Behav..

[5]  Kenji Doya,et al.  The Cyber Rodent Project: Exploration of Adaptive Mechanisms for Self-Preservation and Self-Reproduction , 2005, Adapt. Behav..

[6]  Gordon Wyeth,et al.  Persistent Navigation and Mapping using a Biologically Inspired SLAM System , 2010, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[7]  T. McMahon,et al.  Scaling Stride Frequency and Gait to Animal Size: Mice to Horses , 1974, Science.

[8]  V. Hafner,et al.  The Artificial Mouse - A Robot with Whiskers and Vision , 2004 .

[9]  Hiroyuki Ishii,et al.  Experimental Study on Task Teaching to Real Rats Through Interaction with a Robotic Rat , 2006, SAB.

[10]  Richard T. Vaughan,et al.  The Player/Stage Project: Tools for Multi-Robot and Distributed Sensor Systems , 2003 .

[11]  Jean-Arcady Meyer,et al.  The Psikharpax project: towards building an artificial rat , 2005, Robotics Auton. Syst..

[12]  Ryad Benosman,et al.  Integration of an Omnidirectional Visual System with the Control Architecture of Psikharpax , 2008, SAB.

[13]  Rolf Pfeifer,et al.  On the influence of morphology of tactile sensors for behavior and control , 2006, Robotics Auton. Syst..

[14]  Klaus Schuch,et al.  PCSIM: A Parallel Simulation Environment for Neural Circuits Fully Integrated with Python , 2008, Frontiers Neuroinformatics.

[15]  Paolo Dario,et al.  Biomechatronic design and development of a legged rat robot , 2007, 2007 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics (ROBIO).

[16]  H. Harris,et al.  The Rat , 1958, Nature.

[17]  Atsuo Takanishi,et al.  Interaction between creature and robot: development of an experiment system for rat and rat robot interaction , 1998, Proceedings. 1998 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. Innovations in Theory, Practice and Applications (Cat. No.98CH36190).

[18]  Anthony G. Pipe,et al.  Contact type dependency of texture classification in a whiskered mobile robot , 2009, Auton. Robots.