Cyborg Insect Networks for Exploration and Mapping (CINEMa)

Abstract:

The present day technology falls short in offering centimeter scale mobile robots that can function effectively under unknown and dynamic environmental conditions. The ultimate goal of this project is to enhance the technological infrastructure for Cyber-Physical Systems by establishing the fundamental physical and algorithmic building blocks of a biobotic swarm and producing a cyber-physical sensor network among the individuals of non-eusocial insects such as cockroaches and moths with an aim of searching and rescuing victims after natural disasters such as earthquakes.
The activities performed during the Year 2 of this project includes:

• development of acoustic and tissue-electrode impedance sensing capabilities and solar-charging for biobot backpacks,
• establishment of a long-term natural and biobotic control platforms inside an anechoic chamber
• investigation of fenceless boundaries and search for acoustic targets with cockroaches (Gromphadorhina portentosa)
• construction of localization & communication infrastructure,
• modeling and controlling collective motion by learning deterministic and stochastic motion models,
• topological motion modeling based on these models,
• experiments with the swarm robotic platform to test the proposed algorithms.