Overview
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ABSTRACT
Autonomous navigation has become one of the major technological challenges of the 21st century. Mobility needs are immense in service robotics and transports. Several location systems are now available: civilian GPS, which is very efficient, but suffers from variable accuracy (from 5m to 30m) depending on the weather and the environment, computer vision, expensive in terms of computing resources but also sensitive to variations in light, thus limiting its use outdoors. Directly inspired by the Cataglyphis desert ant, the AntBot hexapod robot is located on the basis of step counting and visual odometry by integrating the visual scrolling of the ground, while its heading is estimated using a celestial compass. AntBot repositioned itself with an error of just 7 cm, almost 100 times lower than the civilian GPS.
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Read the articleAUTHORS
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Julien DUPEYROUX: Doctor, Aix-Marseille University
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Stéphane VIOLLET: Research Director, CNRS
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Julien SERRES: Senior Lecturer, Aix-Marseille University
INTRODUCTION
One of the AntBot robot's navigation instruments is based on a celestial compass that detects radiation scattered by the atmosphere in the ultraviolet (UV) spectral band. This instrument is inspired by the dorsal part of the compound eyes of insects, and more specifically of the desert ant Cataglyphis fortis. This bio-inspired celestial compass features just two photodiodes topped by rotating linear polarizing filters to scan the celestial vault, measuring the angle of polarization (AdP) – noted mathematically ψ – of sky light in order to provide heading information to the robot. The heading determination model is inspired by that proposed by Thomas Labhart (University of Zürich, Switzerland) on polarization vision in crickets. Although this biological model should be considered above all as a view of the mind, its sensory parsimony makes it nonetheless very interesting for the development of bio-inspired instruments capable of providing heading information. The performances of this new navigation instrument described in this article attest to the innovative, minimalist, reliable and robust nature of this optical compass for estimating the heading of an autonomous vehicle navigating in an outdoor environment.
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KEYWORDS
vision | Biomimicry | navigation | hexapod | celestial compass | bionics | biorobotics
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AntBot: a robot that orientates itself like an ant
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