Abstract
The concept of cognitive abilities is commonly associated to humans and animals like mammals, birds and others. Nevertheless, in the last years several research groups have intensified the studies on insects that posses a much simpler brain structure even if they are able to show interesting memory and learning capabilities. In this paper a survey on some key results obtained in a joint research activity among Engineers and Neurogeneticians is reported. They were focussed toward the design and implementation of a model of the insect brain inspired by the Drosophila melanogaster. Particular attention was paid to the main neural centers the Mushroom Bodies and the Central Complex. Moreover a Software/Hardware framework, where the model could be tested and evaluated by using both simulated and real robots, is described. This research activity aims at introducing an insect brain to act as a controller for very smart and sophisticated insectoid body structures, to give rise to a new generation of novel embodied intelligent machines.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Webb, B., Consi, T.R.: Biorobotics: methods and applications. AAAI Press/MIT Press, Menlo Park (2001)
Dorigo, M., Stutzle, T.: Ant Colony Optimization. MIT Press (2004)
Srinivasan, M.V., et al.: Honeybee Navigation: Nature and Calibration of the Odometer. Science 287, 851 (2000)
Rind, F., Santer, R., Blanchard, J., Verschure, P.: Sensors and sensing in biology and engineering, springerwiennewyork ed. Barth, Humphrey, Secomb, ch. Locust’s looming detectors for robot sensors (2003)
Webb, B., Scutt, T.: A simple latency dependent spiking neuron model of cricket phonotaxis. Biological Cybernetics 82(3), 247–269 (2000)
Arena, P., Fortuna, L., Frasca, M., Patané, L., Pavone, M.: Realization of a CNN-driven cockroach-inspired robot. In: Proc. of ISCAS (2006)
Watson, J., Ritzmann, R., Zill, S., Pollack, A.: Control of obstacle climbing in the cockroach, Blaberus discoidalis, I. Kinematics. J. Comp. Physiol. A 188, 39–53 (2002)
Cruse, H., Kindermann, T., Schumm, M., Dean, J., Schmitz, J.: Walknet a biologically inspired network to control six-legged walking. Neural Networks 11, 1435–1447 (1998)
Arena, E., Arena, P., Patané, L.: Efficient hexapodal locomotion control based on flow-invariant subspaces. In: Proc. of World Congress of IFAC, Milan, Italy (2011)
Arena, P., Patané, L., Pollino, M., Ventura, C.: Tribot: a new prototype of bio-inspired hybrid robot. In: Proc. of IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent RObots and Systems, St. Louis, Missouri, USA (2009)
Arena, P., De Fiore, S., Patané, L., Pollino, M., Ventura, C.: Stdp-based behavior learning on the TriBot robot. In: Proc. of SPIE, vol. 7365 (2009)
Triphan, T., Poeck, B., Neuser, K., Strauss, R.: Visual targeting of motor actions in climbing. Drosophila, Curr. Biol. 20, 663–668 (2010)
Joger, H., Kauf, C., Prochazka, U., Strauss, R.: The protocerebral bridge holds a representation for object positions – orientation studies in ocelliless and wild-type flies with partially occluded eyes. In: Proc. 33nd Goettingen Neurobiology Conference (2011)
Arena, P., Patané, L., Termini, P.S.: An insect brain computational model inspired by Drosophila melanogaster: Simulation results. In: Proc. of IJCNN, Barcelona, Spain (2010)
Arena, P., Berg, C., Patané, L., Strauss, R., Termini, P.S.: An insect brain computational model inspired by Drosophila melanogaster: Architecture description. In: Proc. of IJCNN, Barcelona, Spain (2010)
Arena, P., Patané, L., Termini, P.S.: Decision making processes in the fruit fly: a computational model. In: Proc. of 21th Italian Workshop on Neural Networks, Vietri sul Mare, Salerno, Italy (2011)
Arena, P., Cosentino, M., Patané, L., Vitanza, A.: SPARKRS4CS: a software/hardware framework for cognitive architectures. In: Proc. of SPIE Microtechnologies, Prague (2011)
Arena, P., De Fiore, S., Patané, L., Termini, P.S., Strauss, R.: Visual learning in Drosophila: application on a roving robot and comparisons. In: Proc. of SPIE Microtechnologies, Prague (2011)
Arena, P., De Fiore, S., Patané, L., Alba, L., Strauss, R.: Drosophila-inspired visual orientation model on the Eye-Ris platform: experiments on a roving robot. In: Proc. of SPIE Microtechnologies, Prague (2011)
Rodriguez-Vazquez, A., et al.: The Eye-RIS CMOS Vision System. In: Analog Circuit Design, pp. 15–32. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Arena, P., Fortuna, L., Frasca, M., Patané, L., Pollino, M.: An autonomous mini-hexapod robot controlled through a CNN-based CPG VLSI chip. In: Proc. of CNNA, Istanbul, Turkey, pp. 401–406 (2006)
Mueller, S.T., Jones, M., Minnery, S.: The BICA Cognitive Decathlon: A Test Suite for Biologically-Inspired Cognitive Agents (2007)
Arena, P., Patané, L., Termini, P.S.: An insect brain inspired neural model for object representation and expectation. In: International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, San Jose, California (2011)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Arena, P., Patané, L., Termini, P.S., Vitanza, A., Strauss, R. (2011). Software/Hardware Issues in Modelling Insect Brain Architecture. In: Jeschke, S., Liu, H., Schilberg, D. (eds) Intelligent Robotics and Applications. ICIRA 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 7102. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-25489-5_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-25489-5_5
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-25488-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-25489-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)