Abstract
Animals control their limbs very efficiently using interconnected neuronal populations. We propose that these populations can be seen as general-purpose neuronal operational amplifiers, or neuronal “op-amps”, forming adaptive feedback networks. The neuronal op-amp is an interdisciplinary concept offering tentative explanations of animal behaviour as well as approaches to biologically inspired high-dimensional robot control. For instance, in biology, the concept indicates the origin of synergies and saliency in the mammalian central nervous system; in robotics, it presents a design of simple but robust adaptive controllers that identify unknown sensors online. Here, we introduce the neuronal op-amp concept and its biological basis. We explore its biological plausibility, its application, and its performance in adaptive control both theoretically and experimentally.
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Acknowledgments
The author thanks the THE project partners and reviewers for many inspirational interdisciplinary discussions across the robotics and neuroscience camps, and is especially grateful for support by Dr. Henrik Jörntell at the Department of Experimental Medical Science, Lund University. The author is grateful to Prof. Rolf Johansson at the Department of Automatic Control, Lund University, who introduced him to the fascinating field of adaptive control. This research was funded by the European Union FP7 research project THE, “The Hand Embodied”, under grant agreement 248587.
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Nilsson, M. (2016). Neuronal “Op-amps” Implement Adaptive Control in Biology and Robotics. In: Bianchi, M., Moscatelli, A. (eds) Human and Robot Hands. Springer Series on Touch and Haptic Systems. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26706-7_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26706-7_6
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