Ratbot automatic navigation by electrical reward stimulation based on distance measurement in unknown environments

Traditional automatic navigation methods for bio-robots are constrained to configured environments and thus can´t be applied to tasks in unknown environments. With no consideration of bio-robot´s own innate living ability and treating bio-robots in the same way as mechanical robots, those methods neglect the intelligence behavior of animals. This paper proposes a novel ratbot automatic navigation method in unknown environments using only reward stimulation and distance measurement. By utilizing rat´s habit of thigmotaxis and its reward-seeking behavior, this method is able to incorporate rat´s intrinsic intelligence of obstacle avoidance and path searching into navigation. Experiment results show that this method works robustly and can successfully navigate the ratbot to a target in the unknown environment. This work might put a solid base for application of ratbots and also has significant implication of automatic navigation for other bio-robots as well.