Biomimetic robot lobster performs chemo-orientation in turbulence using a pair of spatially separated sensors: Progress and challenges

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Abstract

Lobsters are capable of tracking turbulent plumes to their sources faster than can be accomplished by estimating a spatial gradient from time-averaging the concentration signal. We have used RoboLobster, a biomimetic robot lobster to investigate biologically scaled chemotaxis algorithms using two point concentration sampling to track a statistically characterized turbulent plume. Our results identify the range of effectiveness of these algorithms and, with studies of lobster behavior, suggest effective strategies beyond this range. They suggest that a lobster’s chemo-orientation strategy entails an unidentified means of dealing with the intermittency of the concentration signal. Extensions of these algorithms likely to improve are discussed.

Keywords

Chemo-orientation
Turbulence
Biomimic
Lobster

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Frank W. Grasso grew up in suburban Boston, MA, in the United States. In 1984 he received a B.Sc. in Biology and BioTechnology from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Following a stint at the University of Vermont Medical School in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics where he studied human neuroanatomy, he entered the Ph.D. program in Neuroscience and Behavior at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His Ph.D. awarded in 1994, concerned the representation of natural scenes in the mammalian visual cortex by natural and artificial neural networks. He went on to Post Doctoral work at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, MA, and Boston University studying the representation of chemical stimuli in the olfactory systems of lobsters. In 1997 he was promoted to Senior Research Associate at the Boston University Marine Program. His research focuses on the application of biomimetic robotics to understanding the relationships between animals’ behavior, their central nervous systems and their physical environments.

Thomas R. Consi is a Research Engineer and Lecturer in the Ocean Engineering Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He holds a Ph.D. in Biology from Columbia University and was a Post-Doc in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. He was an early member of the MIT Sea Grant Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Laboratory where he worked on a number of marine robots including RoboLobster. His current research focuses on the biomechanics of marine animals.

Jelle Atema is a Professor of Biology at Boston University and the Director of the Boston University Marine Program in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. His research interests are in the sensory biology of aquatic animals. Current research deals with the physics of odor dispersal, the sensor filter properties of chemo- and mechanoreceptors that appear to be involved in the detection of “flavored eddies” and the plume tracking behavior of lobsters as models for underwater navigation by odor signals. He collaborates with Frank Grasso, David Mountain and Tom Consi in the development of an underwater robot with plume tracking capabilities; the robot is inspired by lobsters and designed for mine detection. Other research deals with chemical communication in lobster social behavior and the signals involved in individual recognition, dominance, and gender.