TACTILE TEXTURE DISCRIMINATION IN THE ROBOT-RAT PSIKHARPAX

Abstract

Abstract: We endowed a whiskered robot with a simple algorithm allowing to discriminate textures. Its efficiency and robustness have been demonstrated using both a fixed head and a mobile platform. Comparatively to previous similar approaches, this system affords greater behavioral capacities and proves to be able to complement or supply vision in simple navigation tasks. The corresponding results suggest that the length and number of the whiskers involved play a role in texture discrimination. They also suggest that two hypotheses that are currently considered as mutually exclusive to explain texture recognition in rats- i.e., the “kinetic signature hypothesis ” and the “resonance hypothesis ”- may be, in fact, complementary. 1