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Image Understanding: Research
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Project ANGELS
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ANGuilliform robot with ELectric Sense
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| Project Type |
EU-Project STREP
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| Funded by |
EU
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| Start |
01.02.2009
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| End |
31.01.2012
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| Project Manager |
Dr. rer. nat. Serge Kernbach
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| Staff |
M.Sc. Donny Sutantyo
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| Contact |
Dr. rer. nat. Serge Kernbach
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| Brief Description |
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The aim of the ANGELS project is to design and build a prototype of a reconfigurable Anguilliform swimming
robot able to split into smaller agents (and vice-versa), each equipped with a bio-inspired “electric sense” used
both for recognition of objects and communication between agents. This mode of active perception, present in
gymnotid and mormyrid fish, is based on the polarisation of certain regions of the fish body, so generating an
electric field flowing through an electroreceptive skin that plays the role of an electric retina. These fishes’ use
of changes in body morphology, adapted to their electroperception systems, will be embodied in the intelligent
control of the reconfigurable ANGELS robot. The robot will exploit both “mechanical re-configurability”, by
changing body form or splitting into component agents, and a new concept of “electric re-configurability” that
will allow the robots to self-adapt their perception to their environment by changing the location of emitters and
receptors on the robot boundaries. The electric field generated around the robots can be considered as a
prolongation of their material body in the surrounding water. This prolongation, that we name “electric-body”,
can then be shaped through electric reconfigurations. ANGELS will explore the range of abilities conferred by
different mechanical and electric morphologies, from the shaping of the common electric body shared by the
agents navigating in formation, to design of behavioural cooperative rules inspired by fish for improving multiagent
perception through emergent collective behaviours.
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Kernbach, Olga
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| © Universität Stuttgart |
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