Insect inspired behaviours for the autonomous control of mobile robots.pdfVIP

Insect Inspired Behaviours for the Autonomous Control of Mobile Robots K. Weber 1 , S. Venkatesh 1 and M.V. Srinivasan 2 1 Department of Computer Science, Curtin University of Technology, GPO Box U 1987 Perth 6001, Australia. Email: weberk, svetha@cs.curtin.edu.au 2 Centre for Visual Sciences, Research School of Biological Sciences, Australian National University, P.O. Box 475 Canberra, A.C.T. 2601, Australia. Email: srini@rsbs-central.anu.edu.au Abstract Animals navigate through various uncontrolled environments with seemingly little effort. Flying insects, especially, are quite adept at manoeuvring in complex, unpredictable and possibly hostile environments. Through both simulation and real-world experiments, we demonstrate the feasibility of equipping a mobile robot with the ability to navigate a corridor environment, in real time, using principles based on insect-based visual guidance. In part icular we have used the bees’ navigational strategy of measuring object range in terms of image velocity. We have also shown the viability and usefulness of various other insect behaviours: (i) keeping walls equidistant, (ii) slowing down when approaching an object, (iii) regulating speed according to tunnel width, and (iv) using visual motion as a measure of distance travelled. 1 Introduction Approaches to autonomous robot navigation employing passive vision are attractive in that visual sensors constitute a rich, yet relatively cheap source of information about the surrounding 3D environment. However, visual sensors are also the ones that entail the most computation. Consequently, there is a strong motivation to explore techniques that make simple, qualitative observations of the important properties of a scene. One way in which to tackle this problem is to examine how relatively simple animals, such as insects, overcome the problems of autonomous navigation. Given their small size and relatively simple nervous systems, it seems likely that insects employ “short cuts