Bioinspired Engineering of Exploration Systems for NASA and DoD

Abstract

A new approach called bioinspired engineering of exploration systems (BEES) and its value for solving pressing NASA and DoD needs are described. Insects (for example honeybees and dragonflies) cope remarkably well with their world, despite possessing a brain containing less than 0.01% as many neurons as the human brain. Although most insects have immobile eyes with fixed focus optics and lack stereo vision, they use a number of ingenious, computationally simple strategies for perceiving their world in three dimensions and navigating successfully within it. We are distilling selected insect-inspired strategies to obtain novel solutions for navigation, hazard avoidance, altitude hold, stable flight, terrain following, and gentle deployment of payload. Such functionality provides potential solutions for future autonomous robotic space and planetary explorers. A BEES approach to developing lightweight low-power autonomous flight systems should be useful for flight control of such biomorphic flyers for both NASA and DoD needs. Recent biological studies of mammalian retinas confirm that representations of multiple features of the visual world are systematically parsed and processed in parallel. Features are mapped to a stack of cellular strata within the retina. Each of these representations can be efficiently modeled in semiconductor cellular nonlinear network (CNN) chips. We describe recent breakthroughs in exploring the feasibility of the unique blending of insect strategies of navigation with mammalian visual search, pattern recognition, and image understanding into hybrid biomorphic flyers for future planetary and terrestrial applications. We describe a few future mission scenarios for Mars exploration, uniquely enabled by these newly developed biomorphic flyers.

Emergent Specialization in Biologically Inspired Collective Behavior Systems

“…RoboCup soccer (Kitano & Asada, 2000), (Stone & Veloso, 1999), (Luke, Farris, Jackson, & Hendler, 1998), (Luke & Spector, 1996), (Andre & Teller, 1999); multi-agent computer games (Revello & McCartney, 2002), (Stanley, Bryant, & Miikkulainen, 2005a), (Stanley, Bryant, Karpov, & Miikkulainen, 2006), (Bryant & Miikkulainen, 2003), (Stanley & Miikkulainen, 2002), (Cremer, Kearney, & Willemsen, 1997), (Wray, Laird, Nuxoll, Stokes, & Kerfoot, 2005), (Stanley et al, 2005b); collective sensing, survey, or search and find tasks (Brooks & Flynn, 1989), (Amat, Mantaras, & Sierra, 1995), (Thakoor, 2000), (Thakoor et al, 2003), (Kitano et al, 1999). Each of these task domains mandates some degree of collective behavior, where specialization is beneficial for improving task performance.…”

“…Achieving scalability in the learning of behavioral specialization is especially prevalent for tasks that require an increasing degree of heterogeneity, and complexity in collective behavior, as a response to dynamically emerging task challenges (Thakoor, 2000). However, the scalability of the RL method as a mechanism for encouraging behavioral specialization remains unclear since only two group sizes (10 and 30 agents), and a discrete environment of one size (54 x 54 grid cells) was tested.…”

Emergent specialization in the extended multi-rover problem

“…This selection of sensors and actuators was 1 Rover parameter settings, such as battery energy, sensor and actuator costs, communication range and speed of movement are specified in previous work [4]. based upon design proposals for autonomous rovers [20] that are capable of detecting and performing some preliminary categorization of red rocks using directional visual sensors (detection sensor), moving (movement actuator) in order to evaluate selected red rocks using a physical contact sensor (evaluation sensor), and then communicating pertinent red rock data to a base station (communications actuator).…”

Bio-inspired flight control and visual search with CNN technology

“…We are deciphering many of these natural visual strategies and have found ways to apply the results in areas such as navigation, stable flight and terrain following. With the use of biomorphic fliers [1] our results could also contribute to previously impossible projects in related fields of science.…”