Bio-robots automatic navigation with electrical reward stimulation.
Bio-robots that controlled by outer stimulation through brain computer interface (BCI) suffer from the dependence on realtime guidance of human operators. Current automatic navigation methods for bio-robots focus on the controlling rules to force animals to obey man-made commands, with animals' intelligence ignored. This paper proposes a new method to realize the automatic navigation for bio-robots with electrical micro-stimulation as real-time rewards. Due to the reward-seeking instinct and trial-and-error capability, bio-robot can be steered to keep walking along the right route with rewards and correct its direction spontaneously when rewards are deprived. In navigation experiments, rat-robots learn the controlling methods in short time. The results show that our method simplifies the controlling logic and realizes the automatic navigation for rat-robots successfully. Our work might have significant implication for the further development of bio-robots with hybrid intelligence.
Qiushi Academy for Advanced Studies (QAAS), Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China.
Chao
C
Sun
Xinlu
X
Zhang
Nenggan
N
Zheng
Weidong
W
Chen
Xiaoxiang
X
Zheng
D000818:Animals; D062207:Brain-Computer Interfaces; D004558:Electric Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D018782:Maze Learning; D051381:Rats; D012371:Robotics