A KAIST research team presented a hybrid animal-robot interaction called “the parasitic robot system,” that imitates the nature relationship between parasites and host.
The research team led by Professor Phil-Seung Lee of the Department of Mechanical Engineering took an animal’s locomotive abilities to apply the theory of using a robot as a parasite. The robot is attached to its host animal in a way similar to an actual parasite, and it interacts with the host through particular devices and algorithms.
Even with remarkable technology advancements, robots that operate in complex and harsh environments still have some serious limitations in moving and recharging. However, millions of years of evolution have led to there being many real animals capable of excellent locomotion and survive in actual natural environment.
Certain kinds of real parasites can manipulate the behavior of the host to increase the probability of its own reproduction. Similarly, in the proposed concept of a “parasitic robot,” a specific behavior is induced by the parasitic robot in its host to benefit the robot.
The team chose a turtle as their first host animal and designed a parasitic robot that can perform “stimulus-response training.” The parasitic robot, which is attached to the turtle, can induce the turtle’s object-tracking behavior through repeated training sessions.
The robot then simply guides it using LEDs and feeds it snacks as a reward for going in the right direction through a programmed algorithm. After training sessions lasting five weeks, the parasitic robot can successfully control the direction of movement of the host turtles in the waypoint navigation task in a water tank.
This hybrid animal–robot interaction system could provide an alternative solution of the limitations of conventional mobile robot systems in various fields. Ph.D. candidate Dae-Gun Kim, the first author of this research said that there are a wide variety of animals including mice, birds, and fish that could perform equally as well at such tasks. He said that in the future, this system will be applied to various exploration and reconnaissance missions that humans and robots find it difficult to do on their own.
Kim said, “This hybrid animal-robot interaction system could provide an alternative solution to the limitations of conventional mobile robot systems in various fields, and could also act as a useful interaction system for the behavioral sciences.”
Learn more: Parasitic Robot System for Turtle’s Waypoint Navigation
[osd_subscribe categories=’cyborg’ placeholder=’Email Address’ button_text=’Subscribe Now for any new posts on the topic “CYBORG’]
The Latest on: Hybrid animal-robot
[google_news title=”” keyword=”hybrid animal-robot” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]- Researchers Breed Mice With Hybrid Brains Containing Cells From Rats
In one experiment, rat neurons helped mice restore their senses of smell—the first time any animal has perceived the world through the sensory hardware of another species ...
- Humanoid Robot With AI Mind Is Meant to Think Just Like People, And It’s Learning
Canadian startup Sanctuary AI introduces the seventh generation of the Phoenix robot with a mind and capabilities meant to mimic the human one ...
- Trotting robots reveal emergence of animal gait transitions
A four-legged robot trained with machine learning by EPFL researchers has learned to avoid falls by spontaneously switching between walking, trotting, and pronking—a milestone for roboticists as well ...
- Cross-species hybrid brain transfers sense of smell to a totally new animal
Adding rat stem cells to a mouse embryo resulted in a ‘hybrid brain’ in which the rat cells stepped in to restore function when the mouse’s sense of smell was removed, new research has shown. It’s the ...
- Here’s how cockroach-hybrid robots & other badass innovations help keep you & S’pore safe
With safety, it’s often a cat-and-mouse game. Scams and deepfakes are continually evolving. And even Singapore is not immune to the effects of global geopolitical tensions and instability. As threats ...
via Google News and Bing News