In order to get a better sense (pun intended! ha-ha) of the robotics world, I read A test bed for insect-inspired robotic control by Michael Reiser and Michael Dickinson (2003). Glancing through robotics articles, this one stuck out to me immediately as intriguing (insects + robots? huh?) and potentially relevant (insects + agriculture seem to go together). So why are insects relevant to robotics? A big challenge in robotics is how to balance the imperfection of sensors with the unpredictability of many environments. Insects such as flies, the model for study, happen to also have imperfect, “noisy” sensors but do pretty well in the real world. The authors decided to model a robot – the FlyBall – after fly behavior. Much of a fly’s behavior relies heavily on vision, which tells them (by light) whether a wall or other obstacle is approaching. When an obstacle is detected, a fly will change direction quickly at roughly 90 degrees. The hope here is that you’ll be able to design robots better at moving/obstacle detection while still having noisy sensors. Basically, after a lot of complicated math and experiments, they determined that they had a fairly accurate model of fly flight behavior. Their work, though still in beginning stages, could be really relevant to non-flight robots as well.

So how could this apply to growBots?

Thinking about the actual technology, if this were developed more it could be very relevant to a farm, especially if it flies. It could avoid the crops, wandering animals etc with a pretty basic model of vision.

Thinking for the now, since the development time and costs are unknown, this paper is a good reminder of how much needs to be advanced to create richer robots. Also, this was a good immersive experience. Robotics is complicated! Half the time, I had NO idea what on earth they were talking about. I got the impression that they were trying to write ‘simply’, but most of the math symbols/language was beyond me. Like, “robust sensory-motor mapping” – although I have a basic idea of what it means – doesn’t trigger specific examples in my head, nor does ‘unrestrained robot’, nor Hi,j(n) = Didj(n) x Ii,j+l (n) – Di,jI (n) x Ii,j(n). We should try to identify key terms in robotics and keep this in mind when we’re trying to explain some even more basic robotics concepts. Once you get past the jargon, it’s pretty cool stuff.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 at 1:50 am and is filed under Robotic Tidbits, Robots Are the Future. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.