Biomimetic Manipulator Control Design for Bimanual Tasks in the Natural Environment by Alexander McKenzie Chalmers Smith As robots become more prolific in the human environment, it is important that safe operational procedures are introduced at the same time; typical robot control methods are often very stiff to maintain good positional tracking, but this makes contact (purposeful or accidental...

Robotic fish that dynamically interact with live fish shoals dramatically augment the toolset of behavioral biologists. We have developed a system of biomimetic fish for the investigation of collective behavior in Guppies and similarly small fish. This contribution presents full implementation details of the system and promising experimental results. Over long durations our robots are able to i...

In this study, analytical techniques and fuzzy logic methods are applied to the dynamic modelling and efficient swimming control of a biomimetic robotic fish, which is actuated by an ionic polymer-metal composite (IPMC). A physical-based model for the biomimetic robotic fish is proposed. The model incorporates both the hydrodynamics of the IPMC tail and the actuation dynamics of the IPMC. The c...

Brain-machine interfaces can greatly improve the performance of prosthetics. Utilizing biomimetic neuronal modeling in brain machine interfaces (BMI) offers the possibility of providing naturalistic motor-control algorithms for control of a robotic limb. This will allow finer control of a robot, while also giving us new tools to better understand the brain's use of electrical signals. However, ...

In the past decade, a large number of robots have been built that explicitly implement biological navigation behaviours. We review these biomimetic approaches using a framework that allows for a common description of biological and technical navigation behaviour. The review shows that biomimetic systems make signi cant contributions to two elds of research: First, they provide a real world test...

In this paper, a new biomimetic control method for a quadruped walking robot is proposed. The method is derived by the observation of the gravity load receptor and stimulusreaction mechanism of quadrupeds’ locomotion, and the study of the stances on walking and energy efficiency. Though the controller is simple, it provides a useful framework for controlling a quadruped walking robot. In partic...

The growing field of human-robot interaction (HRI) demands robots that move fluidly, gracefully, compliantly and safely. This paper describes our recent work in the design and evaluation of long-travel voice coil actuators (VCAs) for use in robots intended for interacting with people. The basic advantages and shortcomings of electromagnetic actuators are discussed and evaluated in the context o...

This paper presents the design and prototype of a small quadruped robot whose walking motion is realized by two piezocomposite actuators. In the design, biomimetic ideas are employed to obtain the agility of motions and sustainability of a heavy load. The design of the robot legs is inspired by the leg configuration of insects, two joints (hip and knee) of the leg enable two basic motions, lift...

Active vibrissal touch can be used to replace or to supplement sensory systems such as computer vision and, therefore, improve the sensory capacity of mobile robots. This paper describes how arrays of whisker-like touch sensors have been incorporated onto mobile robot platforms taking inspiration from biology for their morphology and control. There were two motivations for this work: first, to ...