Abstract
A biologically inspired model of head direction cells is presented and tested on a small mobile robot. Head direction cells (discovered in the brain of rats in 1984) encode the head orientation of their host irrespective of the host’s location in the environment. The head direction system thus acts as a biological compass (though not a magnetic one) for its host. Head direction cells are influenced in different ways by idiothetic (host-centred) and allothetic (not host-centred) cues. The model presented here uses the visual, vestibular and kinesthetic inputs that are simulated by robot sensors. Three test cases are presented that cover different state combinations of the inputs. The test results are compared with biological observations in previous literature.
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Kyriacou, T. (2011). An Implementation of a Biologically Inspired Model of Head Direction Cells on a Robot. In: Groß, R., Alboul, L., Melhuish, C., Witkowski, M., Prescott, T.J., Penders, J. (eds) Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems. TAROS 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 6856. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23232-9_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23232-9_7
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