Emotional bio-robots have become a hot research topic in last two decades. Though there have been some progress in research, design and development of various emotional bio-robots, few of them can be used in practical...Emotional bio-robots have become a hot research topic in last two decades. Though there have been some progress in research, design and development of various emotional bio-robots, few of them can be used in practical applications. The study of emotional bio-robots demands multi-disciplinary co-operation. It involves computer science, artificial intelligence, 3D computation, engineering system modelling, analysis and simulation, bionics engineering, automatic control, image processing and pattern recognition etc. Among them, face detection belongs to image processing and pattern recognition. An emotional robot must have the ability to recognize various objects, particularly, it is very important for a bio-robot to be able to recognize human faces from an image. In this paper, a face detection method is proposed for identifying any human faces in colour images using human skin model and eye detection method. Firstly, this method can be used to detect skin regions from the input colour image after normalizing its luminance. Then, all face candidates are identified using an eye detection method. Comparing with existing algorithms, this method only relies on the colour and geometrical data of human face rather than using training datasets. From experimental results, it is shown that this method is effective and fast and it can be applied to the development of an emotional bio-robot with further improvements of its speed and accuracy.展开更多
A system is described here that can noninvasively control the navigation of freely behaving rat via ultrasonic,epidermaland LED photic stimulators on the back.The system receives commands from a remote host computer t...A system is described here that can noninvasively control the navigation of freely behaving rat via ultrasonic,epidermaland LED photic stimulators on the back.The system receives commands from a remote host computer to deliver specifiedelectrical stimulations to the hearing,pain and visual senses of the rat respectively.The results demonstrate that the three stimuliwork in groups for the rat navigation.We can control the rat to proceed and make right and left turns with great efficiency.Thisexperiment verified that the rat was able to reach a setting destination in the way of cable with the help of a person through theappropriate coordination of the three stimulators.The telemetry video camera mounted on the head of the rat also achieveddistant image acquisition and helped to adjust its navigation path over a distance of 300 m.In a word,the non-invasive motioncontrol navigation system is a good,stable and reliable bio-robot.展开更多
While much attention has been given to bio-robotics in recent years, not much of this has been given to the challenging subject of locomotion in slippery conditions. This study begins to rectify this by proposing a bi...While much attention has been given to bio-robotics in recent years, not much of this has been given to the challenging subject of locomotion in slippery conditions. This study begins to rectify this by proposing a biomimetic approach to generating the friction required to give sufficient propulsive force on a slippery substrate. We took inspiration from a successful biological solution-that of applying hair-like structures to the propulsive appendages, similar to the setae found in nereid polychaetes living in muddy habitats. We began by examining the morphology and the mean locomotion parameters of one of the most common nereids.. Nereis diversicolor. Following this study, we designed and fabricated a robotic system with appendages imitating the biological shape found in the worm. A flexible control system was developed to allow most of the locomotion parameters observed in the real worm to be applied to the robot. Experiments on three different natural substrates ranging from fine sand to gravel showed that, whereas a plate attached to the appendage generated most thrust on a small particle substrate, a bundle of artificial setae attached to the appendage generated most thrust on a large particle substrate. On all types of substrate tested, an appendage without any attachment did significantly worse than one with. This suggests that hair-like structures can be advantageous.展开更多
Telemetric monitoring and control are the two critical aspects for a robot-rat. Development in this work is a telemetric system to record the electroencephalogram （EEG） from adult freely roaming animals. The system ...Telemetric monitoring and control are the two critical aspects for a robot-rat. Development in this work is a telemetric system to record the electroencephalogram （EEG） from adult freely roaming animals. The system consists of two separated components： the transmit-end system, which consists of the preamplifier, the LPF （low-pass filter） and the transmitter, and the receive-end system, which consists of the receiver, the interface of receive-end and PC. The transmit-end system with light weight （10 g including battery） and small size （20 mm×50 mm） is fettered on the back of the rat. The EEG signal is modulated at the RF frequency of 2.4 GHz by nRF24E1 and transmitted by the antenna. The system can measure the EEG signal of the rat in freely roaming over a wireless transmission distance up to 8 m, and provide a new platform for behavioral and neurophysiological experiments.展开更多
文摘Emotional bio-robots have become a hot research topic in last two decades. Though there have been some progress in research, design and development of various emotional bio-robots, few of them can be used in practical applications. The study of emotional bio-robots demands multi-disciplinary co-operation. It involves computer science, artificial intelligence, 3D computation, engineering system modelling, analysis and simulation, bionics engineering, automatic control, image processing and pattern recognition etc. Among them, face detection belongs to image processing and pattern recognition. An emotional robot must have the ability to recognize various objects, particularly, it is very important for a bio-robot to be able to recognize human faces from an image. In this paper, a face detection method is proposed for identifying any human faces in colour images using human skin model and eye detection method. Firstly, this method can be used to detect skin regions from the input colour image after normalizing its luminance. Then, all face candidates are identified using an eye detection method. Comparing with existing algorithms, this method only relies on the colour and geometrical data of human face rather than using training datasets. From experimental results, it is shown that this method is effective and fast and it can be applied to the development of an emotional bio-robot with further improvements of its speed and accuracy.
基金supported by the Chinese National Natural Science Foundation(Grant No.30970883)the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universitiesties(Grant No.CDJRC10230012)chongqing University Innovation Fund(200801A1B0250284)
文摘A system is described here that can noninvasively control the navigation of freely behaving rat via ultrasonic,epidermaland LED photic stimulators on the back.The system receives commands from a remote host computer to deliver specifiedelectrical stimulations to the hearing,pain and visual senses of the rat respectively.The results demonstrate that the three stimuliwork in groups for the rat navigation.We can control the rat to proceed and make right and left turns with great efficiency.Thisexperiment verified that the rat was able to reach a setting destination in the way of cable with the help of a person through theappropriate coordination of the three stimulators.The telemetry video camera mounted on the head of the rat also achieveddistant image acquisition and helped to adjust its navigation path over a distance of 300 m.In a word,the non-invasive motioncontrol navigation system is a good,stable and reliable bio-robot.
文摘While much attention has been given to bio-robotics in recent years, not much of this has been given to the challenging subject of locomotion in slippery conditions. This study begins to rectify this by proposing a biomimetic approach to generating the friction required to give sufficient propulsive force on a slippery substrate. We took inspiration from a successful biological solution-that of applying hair-like structures to the propulsive appendages, similar to the setae found in nereid polychaetes living in muddy habitats. We began by examining the morphology and the mean locomotion parameters of one of the most common nereids.. Nereis diversicolor. Following this study, we designed and fabricated a robotic system with appendages imitating the biological shape found in the worm. A flexible control system was developed to allow most of the locomotion parameters observed in the real worm to be applied to the robot. Experiments on three different natural substrates ranging from fine sand to gravel showed that, whereas a plate attached to the appendage generated most thrust on a small particle substrate, a bundle of artificial setae attached to the appendage generated most thrust on a large particle substrate. On all types of substrate tested, an appendage without any attachment did significantly worse than one with. This suggests that hair-like structures can be advantageous.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 30870655 and 30570474.
文摘Telemetric monitoring and control are the two critical aspects for a robot-rat. Development in this work is a telemetric system to record the electroencephalogram （EEG） from adult freely roaming animals. The system consists of two separated components： the transmit-end system, which consists of the preamplifier, the LPF （low-pass filter） and the transmitter, and the receive-end system, which consists of the receiver, the interface of receive-end and PC. The transmit-end system with light weight （10 g including battery） and small size （20 mm×50 mm） is fettered on the back of the rat. The EEG signal is modulated at the RF frequency of 2.4 GHz by nRF24E1 and transmitted by the antenna. The system can measure the EEG signal of the rat in freely roaming over a wireless transmission distance up to 8 m, and provide a new platform for behavioral and neurophysiological experiments.
