CDI-TYPE II: Collaborative Research: Cyber-Amplified Bioinspiration in Robotics

该项目混合了认知心理学，计算视觉和学习，神经机械系统生物学和机器人技术的结果和方法，以开发一个计算机辅助环境，用于研究动物感觉运动策略，发现它们如何加强动物的认知能力，并利用这些见解来激发机器人导航，定位和态势感知的新算法。 我们观察到活的，完整的，高度移动的陆地无脊椎动物捕食者，如鬼蟹，沙漠蝎子和虎甲虫在精心建造的栖息地，挑战他们的能力，谈判地形和空间导航。我们自动收集，注释和数学模型提取他们的行为从大规模，并行实时记录的视觉，肌肉，神经和生物力学记录。 我们挖掘这些数据集，以开发直观的假设，以及正式的数学表示的基础上，这些动物组织自己的感觉运动数据流编译新的行为从以前巩固的成分在自主的心理发展的过程。 我们将众多现有的传感器套件添加到高度敏捷的现有机器人身体上，并通过算法实例化假设的动物模型，以开发支持或反驳证据，挑战和完善它们。我们在建立的相互关系中发现的新的计算工具和思想，有望在长期以来被时空尺度划分的整个学科领域与伴随而来的分析领域之间架起一座桥梁。传统、术语和方法。 例如，对较简单物种的这些复杂能力的研究，提供了对与人类关系更密切的物种的认知结构的新一瞥。 从技术发明的角度来看，这项研究中开创的算法可以为机器提供类似动物的质量？在非结构化的世界中，它在参与环境甚至整体态势感知方面的近端韧性。 例如，该团队受到启发，想象拥有一个具有幽灵蟹（可执行任务）能力的搜索和救援机器人会是什么样子。 从培训和教育的角度来看，本项目开发的自动数据库收集和管理工具向广大受众提供了概念和计算构件，而这些构件迄今一直是少数专家的专属领域。例如，一个普遍可访问的（？基于云的？）一个统一的设计，解析，显示和交叉比较的机器人和动物搜索工具，从最亲密的设计和操作的最广泛的规模将有深远的影响，教师在许多不同层次的能力，以激发魅力和统一的合成和生物科学。

Intellectual MeritThis project mixes results and methods from cognitive psychology, computational vision and learning, neuromechanical systems biology, and robotics to develop a computer assisted environment for studying animal sensorimotor strategies, discovering how they undergird animal cognitive capabilities, and using those insights to inspire new algorithms for robot navigation, localization and situational awareness. We observe live, intact, highly mobile terrestrial invertebrate predators such as ghost crabs, desert scorpions and tiger beetles in carefully constructed habitats that challenge their ability to negotiate terrain and navigate space. We automate the collection, annotation and mathematical model extraction of their behavior from massive, parallel real-time recordings of visual, muscle, neural, and biomechanical recordings. We mine these data sets to develop intuitive hypotheses as well as formal mathematical representations of the basis on which these animals organize their own sensorimotor data streams to compile novel behaviors from previously consolidated constituents in a process of autonomous mental development. We add numerous existing sensor suites to highly agile existing robot bodies and instantiate algorithmically the hypothesized animal models to develop supporting or refuting evidence that challenges and refines them.Broader ImpactsScientifically, the new computational tools and ideas we identify in the interrelations we set up promise a bridge between whole areas of disciplines that have long been divided by spatiotemporal scale and the concomitant gap in analytical tradition, terminology and methods. For example, the study of these complex competencies in simpler species offers a new glimpse at the building blocks of cognition in species more closely related to humans. From the perspective of technological invention, algorithms pioneered in this research could lend an animal-like quality to a machine?s proximal tenacity in engaging its environment and even its overall situational awareness within unstructured worlds. For example, the team is inspired to imagine what it might be like to have a search and rescue robot with the (taskable) capabilities of a ghost crab. From the perspective of training and education, the automated database collection and management tools developed in this project bring to a mass audience the conceptual and computational building blocks that have heretofore been the exclusive province of a small group of experts. For example, a universally accessible (?cloud-based?) tool for unifying the design, parsing, display, and cross comparison of robots and animals searchable at will from the most intimate to the broadest scale of design and operation would have a profound impact on the ability of teachers at many different levels to motivate the fascination and unity of both synthetic and biological science.