EAPSI: Exploring the Unique Movement Strategy of Brittle Stars via Robotic Modeling

脆星是海星的近亲，是受生物启发设计移动机器人的理想模型动物。通过协调数百个运动部件，它们的五个手臂协同工作，允许在复杂的海底地形上快速运动。它们没有前部和后部，可以在不需要转弯的情况下均匀地向各个方向移动。当一只或几只手臂受损或丢失时，它们会重新调整自己的运动以进行补偿，而不会失去任何运动能力。这些特征本身就使脆弱的恒星成为机器人模仿的理想对象，但它们最显著的特点是，它们拦截外部刺激，做出决定，并协调多个运动部件，所有这些都没有大脑！许多移动机器人同样不依赖于单一的控制中心，尽管机器人中的控制中心比脆星使用的生物机械复杂得多，也更具弹性。这项研究将分析脆弱的恒星神经系统如何控制其运动，并设计一个机器人来测试结果。因此，该项目的两个主要目标是：1.确定脆弱的恒星神经系统是如何工作的；2.研究如何将这种设置集成到一个多方面的机器人设备中。东北大学的Akio教授和他的研究小组设计了各种在分散控制下运行的协调行为的机器人。他们在实验室里观察活生生的脆星，并将它们的能力融入机器人设计中。通过EAPSI计划和石黑一郎实验室，该项目将使用这种新方法来确定分散的脆性恒星神经系统是如何控制运动的。这项研究将通过对活体嗜酸性粒细胞的实验以及数学和机器人建模的组合来检验感觉处理、动作决定和任务委派的假设。这将产生一个描述脆星系统的数学模型，该模型可以集成到机器人设备中，以评估其准确性并改善复杂机器人的协调性。该奖项由东亚和太平洋暑期研究所项目资助一名美国研究生的夏季研究，由NSF和日本科学促进会共同资助。

Brittle stars, close relatives of sea stars, are the ideal model animal for biologically inspired mobile robot design. By coordinating hundreds of moving parts, their five arms work together to permit rapid motion across the complex terrain of the sea floor. They lack a front and back, allowing them to move in every direction equally without the need to turn. When one or several arms become damaged or lost, they readjust their locomotion to compensate without any loss of movement capability. These characteristics alone make brittle stars ideal candidates for robotic imitation, yet their most striking feature is that they intercept external stimuli, make decisions, and coordinate multiple moving parts, all without a brain! Many mobile robots similarly do not rely on a single control center, although those in robots are far less complex and resilient than the biological machinery employed by brittle stars. This investigation will analyze how the brittle star nervous system controls its locomotion and engineer a robot to test the results. Thus the two major goals of the project are: 1. To determine how the brittle star nervous system works and 2. To work out how to integrate this setup into a multifaceted robotic device. Professor Akio Ishiguro and his research group at Tohoku University have engineered a variety of robots with coordinated behavior operating under decentralized control. They observe live brittle stars in the lab and incorporate their capabilities into robotic design. Through the EAPSI program and the Ishiguro Lab, this project will use this novel approach to determine how locomotion is controlled by the decentralized brittle star nervous system. This investigation will test hypotheses of sensory processing, action determination, and task delegation with a combination of experiments on live ophiuroids and mathematical and robotic modeling. This will result in a mathematical model describing the brittle star system that can be integrated into a robotic device to evaluate its accuracy and improve coordination in complex robots.This award under the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes program supports summer research by a U.S. graduate student and is jointly funded by NSF and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.