Insect Inspired Robots

Abstract

Insect behaviour has been a rich source of inspiration for the field of robotics as the perception and navigation problems encountered by autonomous robots are faced also by insects. In this paper, we introduce a research platform, the Insectbot, that was built as a testbed for new biologically-inspired, vision-based algorithms and systems. The Insectbot is a ground-based robot but it is capable of simulating conditions of free flight. It is a robust testbed for flight navigation algorithms that offers advantages over other platforms such as helicopters, blimps and other air vehicles. We present the navigational behaviours currently implemented on this robot. Major subsytems include the well-known bee-inspired, corridor-centring behaviour, a flow-based docking algorithm and feature detection algorithms.