A new robot with artificial whiskers could one day be used to locate survivors of natural disasters, or people trapped in burning buildings.
Long plastic whiskers at the side of the robot's head move back and forth up to 5 times per second to detect nearby objects. If a whisker touches something, control software determines the location of the obstacle and orients the robot's head and body so that shorter bristles on its nose can make contact with it.
While many robots use touch sensors to supplement cameras, SCRATCHbot relies solely on its whiskers to feel its way around.
And unlike previous rat-like robots, SCRATCHbot adapts the way it moves its whiskers when it makes contact with an obstacle. The whiskers closest to the object will move less, while those further away make larger, sweeping movements to increase their chances of touching the object and identifying its precise position.
The next version of the robot will be able to discriminate between different textures, like carpet or a hardwood floor, and decide how to navigate based on the surface it encounters, say its developers.
SCRATCHbot was developed as part of the ICEA (Integrating Cognition Emotion and Autonomy) project, which aims to develop artificial intelligence systems inspired by biology. Although the main goal is to use SCRATCHbot for rescue operations, it could also help clarify how mammal brains control the movement of sensory systems such as whiskers.
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