Keywords
Citation
Webb, B. and Consi, T.R. (2002), "Biorobotics: Methods and Applications", Industrial Robot, Vol. 29 No. 3, pp. 287-288. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2002.29.3.287.1
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2002, MCB UP Limited
Biorobotics: Methods and Applications focuses on the role of robots as tools for biologists studying animal behaviour. These animal‐like robots can be used as testbeds for the study and evaluation of biological algorithms for potential engineering applications.
The book comprises eight chapters divided into three sections and is an edited collection of papers that were presented at the American Association for Artificial Intelligence Symposium, “Robots and biology: developing connections” held on 23‐25 October 1998, in Orlando, Florida.
The first section describes the visual system of flies and the sensory systems of biorobotic crickets, lobsters and ants. Papers presented in this section include: “A spiking neuron controller for robot phonotaxis”, “Environmental information, animal behaviour, and biorobotic design: reflections on locating chemical sources in marine environments”, “Insect strategies of visual homing in mobile robots” and “Aerial minirobot that stabilizes and tracks with a bio‐inspired visual scanning sensor”.
The second section includes two papers addressing motor systems. They discuss how the “Construction of a hexapod robot with cockroach kinematics benefits both robotics and biology” and “Build robots with a complex motor system to understand cognition”.
The final section of the book, “Cognitive systems”, discusses higher brain function and neural modeling in mammalian and humanoid robots. Two papers are included addressing “Perceptual invariance and categorization in an embodied model of the visual system” and “Investigating models of social development using a humanoid robot” respectively.
Overall, this is a superbly written book, which presents the field of biorobotics in a clear and inspiring manner. Its diverse coverage makes it suitable for biologists, engineers and computer scientists, and should be noted as a “must read” for those involved with biorobotics.