Abstract
In this study, a desert ant-inspired celestial compass and a bio-inspired minimalist optic flow sensor named M\(^2\)APix (which stands for Michaelis Menten Auto-adaptive Pixels), were embedded onboard our 2 kg-hexapod walking robot called AntBot, in order to reproduce the homing behavior observed in desert ants Cataglyphis fortis. The robotic challenge here was to make the robot come back home autonomously after being displaced from its initial location. The navigation toolkit of AntBot comprises the celestial-based heading direction, and both stride- and ventral optic flow-based odometry, as observed in desert ants. Experimental results show that our bio-inspired approach can be useful for autonomous outdoor navigation robotics in case of GPS or magnetometer failure, but also to compensate for a drift of the inertial measurement unit. In addition, our strategy requires few computational resources due to the small number of pixels (only 14 here), and a high robustness and precision (mean error of 4.8 cm for an overall path ranging from 2 m to 5 m). Finally, this work presents highly interesting field results of ant-based theoretical models for homing tasks that have not been tested yet in insectoid robots.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Muller, M., Wehner, R.: Path integration in desert ants, cataglyphis fortis. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 85(14), 5287–5290 (1988)
Collett, M., Collett, T.S., Bisch, S., Wehner, R.: Local and global vectors in desert ant navigation. Nature 394(6690), 269 (1998)
Wehner, R.: Desert ant navigation: how miniature brains solve complex tasks. J. Comp. Physiol. A. 189(8), 579–588 (2003)
Wehner, R.: The desert ant’s navigational toolkit: procedural rather than positional knowledge. Navigation 55(2), 101–114 (2008)
Labhart, T., Meyer, E.P.: Detectors for polarized skylight in insects: a survey of ommatidial specializations in the dorsal rim area of the compound eye. Microsc. Res. Tech. 47(6), 368–379 (1999)
Labhart, T.: Polarization-opponent interneurons in the insect visual system. Nature 331(6155), 435 (1988)
Wittlinger, M., Wehner, R., Wolf, H.: The desert ant odometer: a stride integrator that accounts for stride length and walking speed. J. Exp. Biol. 210(2), 198–207 (2007)
Ronacher, B., Gallizzi, K., Wohlgemuth, S., Wehner, R.: Lateral optic flow does not influence distance estimation in the desert ant Cataglyphis fortis. J. Exp. Biol. 203(7), 1113–1121 (2000)
Lambrinos, D., Kobayashi, H., Pfeifer, R., Maris, M., Labhart, T., Wehner, R.: An autonomous agent navigating with a polarized light compass. Adapt. Behav. 6(1), 131–161 (1997)
Moller, R., Lambrinos, D., Roggendorf, T., Pfeifer, R., Wehner, R.: Insect strategies of visual homing in mobile robots. In: Proceedings of the Computer Vision and Mobile Robotics Workshop CVMR, vol. 98 (2001)
Chu, J., Zhao, K., Zhang, Q., Wang, T.: Construction and performance test of a novel polarization sensor for navigation. Sens. Actuators A: Phys. 148(1), 75–82 (2008)
Chu, J.K., Wang, Z.W., Guan, L., Liu, Z., Wang, Y.L., Zhang, R.: Integrated polarization dependent photodetector and its application for polarization navigation. IEEE Photonics Technol. Lett. 26(5), 469–472 (2014)
Chu, J., Wang, H., Chen, W., Li, R.: Application of a novel polarization sensor to mobile robot navigation. In: 2009 International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation, ICMA 2009, pp. 3763–3768. IEEE (2009)
Stürzl, W., Carey, N.: A fisheye camera system for polarisation detection on UAVs. In: Fusiello, A., Murino, V., Cucchiara, R. (eds.) ECCV 2012, Part II. LNCS, vol. 7584, pp. 431–440. Springer, Heidelberg (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33868-7_43
Stürzl, W.: A lightweight single-camera polarization compass with covariance estimation. In: IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (2017)
Dupeyroux, J., Passault, G., Ruffier, F., Viollet, S., Serres, J.: Hexabot: a small 3D-printed six-legged walking robot designed for desert ant-like navigation tasks. In: 2017 20th IFAC Word Congress, Toulouse, France, pp. 16628–16631 (2017)
Dupeyroux, J., Diperi, J., Boyron, M., Viollet, S., Serres, J.: A novel insect-inspired optical compass sensor for a hexapod walking robot. In: IROS 2017-IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Vancouver, Canada, pp. 3439–3445 (2017)
Dupeyroux, J., Diperi, J., Boyron, M., Viollet, S., Serres, J.: A bio-inspired celestial compass applied to an ant-inspired robot for autonomous navigation. In: ECMR-European Conference on Mobile Robotics, Paris, France (2017)
Mafrica, S., Godiot, S., Menouni, M., Boyron, M., Expert, F., Juston, R., Marchand, N., Ruffier, F., Viollet, S.: A bio-inspired analog silicon retina with Michaelis-Menten auto-adaptive pixels sensitive to small and large changes in light. Opt. Express 23(5), 5614–5635 (2015)
Dupeyroux, J., Boutin, V., Serres, J., Perrinet, L., Viollet, S.: M\(^2\)APix: a bio-inspired auto-adaptive visual sensor for robust ground height estimation. In: 2018 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS), Florence, Italy (2018, Accepted)
Vanhoutte, E., Mafrica, S., Ruffier, F., Bootsma, R.J., Serres, J.: Time-of-travel methods for measuring optical flow on board a micro flying robot. Sensors 17(3), 571 (2017)
Haferlach, T., Wessnitzer, J., Mangan, M., Webb, B.: Evolving a neural model of insect path integration. Adapt. Behav. 15(3), 273–287 (2007)
Stone, T., Webb, B., Adden, A., Weddig, N.B., Honkanen, A., Templin, R., Wcislo, W., Scimeca, L., Warrant, E., Heinze, S.: An anatomically constrained model for path integration in the bee brain. Current Biol. 27(20), 3069–3085 (2017)
Lin, P.C., Komsuoglu, H., Koditschek, D.E.: A leg configuration measurement system for full-body pose estimates in a hexapod robot. IEEE Trans. Robot. 21(3), 411–422 (2005)
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Marc Boyron and Julien Diperi for their technical support in the conception of the celestial compass.
Funding
This work was supported by the French Direction Générale de l’Armement (DGA), CNRS, Aix-Marseille University, the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, and the French National Research Agency for Research (ANR) with the Equipex/Robotex project.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this paper
Cite this paper
Dupeyroux, J., Serres, J., Viollet, S. (2018). A Hexapod Walking Robot Mimicking Navigation Strategies of Desert Ants Cataglyphis. In: Vouloutsi , V., et al. Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems. Living Machines 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10928. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95972-6_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95972-6_16
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-95971-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-95972-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)