A stochastic algorithm for explorative goal seeking extracted from cockroach walking data

Author

Daltorio, Kathryn A. ; Tietz, Brian R. ; Bender, John A. ; Webster, Victoria A. ; Szczecinski, Nicholas S. ; Branicky, Michael S. ; Ritzmann, Roy E. ; Quinn, Roger D.

Author_Institution

Mech. Eng. Dept., Case Western Reserve Univ., Cleveland, OH, USA

fYear

2012

fDate

14-18 May 2012

Firstpage

2261

Lastpage

2268

Abstract

Cockroach shelter-seeking strategy may look like an undirected random search, but we show that they are attracted to darkened shelters, arriving at a shelter in about half the time it would otherwise take. We were able to identify four statistically significant trends from the behavior of 134 cockroaches in one-minute naïve walking trials with four different arena configurations. By combining these trends into a model, we arrive at an algorithm that significantly directs a simulated agent to a location. This algorithm was then adapted and tested on a small mobile robot equipped with an onboard camera and antenna-like contact sensors.

Keywords

mobile robots; stochastic systems; antenna-like contact sensors; cockroach shelter-seeking strategy; cockroach walking data; darkened shelters; explorative goal seeking; mobile robot; naive walking trials; onboard camera; simulated agent; stochastic algorithm; undirected random search; Cameras; Insects; Legged locomotion; Sensors; Stochastic processes;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2012 IEEE International Conference on

Conference_Location

Saint Paul, MN

ISSN

1050-4729

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-1403-9

Electronic_ISBN

1050-4729

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICRA.2012.6225020

Filename

6225020