A Cricket-Controlled Robot Orienting towards a Sound Source

摘要

We designed a closed-loop experimental setup that interfaces an insect with a robot for testing phonotaxis (sound recognition and localisation) behaviour in crickets. The experimental platform consists of a trackball mounted on a robot, so that a cricket walking on the trackball has its movements translated into corresponding movement of the robot. We describe the implementation of this system and compare the performance with previous cricket data and a neural model circuit on the same robot. Crickets are able to drive the robot towards the sound source, although they show substantially longer walking and stopping bouts than in more standard experimental setups. The potential and the current limitations of the robot setup together with alternative designs are discussed.