iRat: Intelligent Rat Animat Technology

Abstract

This paper presents the iRat (intelligent Rat animat technology), a robot designed for robotic and neuroscience teams as a tool for studies in navigation, embodied cognition, and neuroscience research. The rat animat has capabilities comparable to the popular standard Pioneer DX robots but is an order of magnitude smaller in size and weight. The robot's volume is approximately 0.08m with a mass of 0.5kg and has visual, proximity, and odometry sensors, a differential drive, a 1 GHz x86 computer, and LCD navigation pad interface. To facilitate the value of the platform to a broader range of researchers, the robot uses the Player-Stage framework, and C/C++, Python, and MATLAB APIs have been tested in real time. Two studies of neural simulation for robot navigation have confirmed the rat animat's capabilities.