Bio-inspired Robotics

By

B.s.Satya kanth, V.Sidhartha,Dipin Sharma

Introduction:

Our approach is characterized with a strong inclination for biological

inspiration in which examples in nature — social insects in particular —
are used as a way of designing strategies for controlling mobile robots.
This approach has been successfully applied to the study of task,
namely, Ant’s algorithms used in computer networks for routing data
between Routers.

This phenomenon found in ants to derive the necessary behaviors for

accomplishing this task. We study a species of ant known to possess
this capability.

“bio-Computing” is a way “to understand how the relation of brain,

body and environment produce behavior, to clarify the essential
problems posed, and to devise and test hypotheses under realistic
conditions” social insects were capable of successfully navigating and
acting in the face of uncertain and unpredictable environments. It was
reasoned that if a single robot required complex systems and
techniques in order to perform in a reliable manner, then perhaps
intelligent systems could be designed with many “simpler” robots using
a minimalist approach to sensing and actuation; where group behavior
is an emergent property and control is decentralized. Could system
reliability be achieved by trading complexity for redundancy coupled
with ”randomness” used to explore possible solution paths, which are
often traits found in social insect colonies? May be, biology can teach
us a thing or two about engineering swarms of simple interacting
robots, and the theoretical foundations developed to model and
explain these behaviors found in insect colonies can be used to
underpin a more rigorous approach to collective robot design. Nature
has already demonstrated the feasibility of this approach by way of the
social insects.
Robotics is a combination of electronics, mechanical,
computers and instrumentation.

Artificial intelligence is one of the most complicated tasks in robotics.

Without considering the facts of electronics, mechanical, and
instrumentation people are trying to make use of the optimal solutions
from AI.
But unfortunately the solutions may not be the optimal in
implementation in real time due to lack of co-ordination and leaving
behind the nature’s make.
Traditional Artificial Intelligence:
The traditional artificial intelligence which is followed by the
world today is not producing 100% fruit full results and it is narrowing
the thinking methodology of developing the artificial intelligence for a
given particular task in real time environment.
The traditional artificial intelligences calculates the position and
controls a mobile robot by giving the directions using 2D calculations it
will decided by taking feed back from electronic systems like COMPASS
MODULE, GPRS, GPS, GIROSCOPE etc. which makes it more complex
and costly. By using all such devices it makes the product much
costlier.

For example:

“Roomba-Discovery” displayed at IIT

Bombay by iRobot's chief technology
officer, Professor Rodney rooks
IROBOT. His given statement
“Intelligent robots might fail some
times”. His commercial robot failed in
returning back to its starting position
due to some environmental problems.

Phani with iRobot's chief technology officer, Professor Rodney Brooks

The “Roomba discovery” is intelligent cleaner robot. Which is attached
to a charger at its starting position, its task is to start from its
charging position and clean the environment and return back to its
position. He used HI-FI systems for position identification and control
of his mobile robot “Roomba discovery” and best algorithm is
implemented which is much costlier for that task and it has failed to
identify its starting position. This shows that in real time environment
by using the traditional artificial intelligence it is hard to develop 100%
efficient mobile robot, with its tighter coupling between sensing and
action, behavior may allow robots to deal with the uncertainty
presented by real unstructured environments in which the robots
perform their tasks. After all, social insects were capable of
successfully navigating and acting in the face of uncertain and
unpredictable environments.
“bio-robotics” is a way “to understand how the relation of brain, body
and environment produce behavior, to clarify the essential problems
posed, and to devise and test hypotheses under realistic conditions”.
Reactive behavior, which results in the robot’s immediate response
demanded by real-time environments, lacks the goal-directed
component thought to be a necessary component of intelligent
autonomous systems.
ODOMETRY AND OTHER DEAD-RECKONING METHODS

Odometry is the most widely used navigation method for mobile robot positioning. It is
well known
that odometry provides good short-term accuracy, is inexpensive, and allows very high
sampling
rates. However, the fundamental idea of odometry is the integration of incremental
motion
information over time, which leads inevitably to the accumulation of errors. Particularly,
the
accumulation of orientation errors will cause large position errors which increase
proportionally with
the distance traveled by the robot. Despite these limitations, most researchers agree that
odometry
is an important part of a robot navigation system and that navigation tasks will be
simplified if
odometric accuracy can be improved. Odometry is used in almost all mobile robots, for
various
reasons:
& Odometry data can be fused with absolute position measurements to provide better and
more
reliable position estimation [Cox, 1991; Hollingum, 1991; Byrne et al., 1992; Chenavier
and
Crowley, 1992; Evans, 1994].
& Odometry can be used in between absolute position updates with landmarks. Given a
required
positioning accuracy, increased accuracy in odometry allows for less frequent absolute
position
updates. As a result, fewer landmarks are needed for a given travel distance.
& Many mapping and landmark matching algorithms (for example: [Gonzalez et al.,
1992;
Chenavier and Crowley, 1992]) assume that the robot can maintain its position well
enough to
allow the robot to look for landmarks in a limited area and to match features in that
limited area
to achieve short processing time and to improve matching correctness [Cox, 1991].
& In some cases, odometry is the only navigation information available; for example:
when no
external reference is available, when circumstances preclude the placing or selection of
landmarks in the environment, or when another sensor subsystem fails to provide usable

data.
How useful is biological inspiration

Colonies of social insects share many system-level characteristics we

desire from collective robot systems: simple agents, decentralized
control, robustness through mass effect, redundancy, flexibility and
autonomy. The many rich examples of colony level collective behavior
provided by biologists provide a wealth of data with which to inspire
and to provide an underpinning for initial robotic designs. Although
useful as a starting point in MRS design, biological inspiration has its
limits and engineering models can and should be improved from their
biomimetic beginnings.

Our design:

Bio inspiration from a cockroach:

We designed the robot by observing the insect behavior of cockroach;

the basic function of cockroach is scavenger duty in kitchen at night.
Our designed robot works on the intelligence of cockroach.

The robot performs its cleaning tasks when we go to bed at night and
it cleans its environment randomly like a cockroach searches for its
food and if we switch ON any light it follows back to its home just by
identifying the wall nearest to it and follow the wall till it reaches a
hole, similarly intelligence is applied in our robot. The robot does not
use any HI-FI systems, complex algorithm and internal navigation
system but the bio inspired intelligence of cockroach and the task is
completed at minimum cost.
A cleaning robot developed by us using bio inspiration
from cockroach.

The robot does all the functions of “Roomba” and it is comparatively

very less cost.
bibliography

1) Absolute Beginner's Guide to Building Robots (Gareth Branwyn).

Given complete explanation of roomba.

2) Amphibionics - Build Your Own Reptilian Robot (Karl Williams)

Gives different ideas of mechanical designs

3) IEEE magazine September 2004, volume 37, number 9

Gives very good explanation about implementation of “bee behavior

“
In exploring mars terrain

4) Recent Developments in Biologically Inspired Computing Leandro

Nunes de Castro and Fernando J

Gives good explanation of implementing ant’s algorithm etc.