Dataset Information

Tactile Sensing with Whiskers of Various Shapes: Determining the Three-Dimensional Location of Object Contact Based on Mechanical Signals at the Whisker Base.

ABSTRACT: Almost all mammals use their mystacial vibrissae (whiskers) as important tactile sensors. There are no sensors along the length of a whisker: all sensing is performed by mechanoreceptors at the whisker base. To use artificial whiskers as a sensing tool in robotics, it is essential to be able to determine the three-dimensional (3D) location at which a whisker has made contact with an object. With the assumption of quasistatic, frictionless, single-point contact, previous work demonstrated that the 3D contact point can be uniquely determined if all six components of force and moment are measured at the whisker base, but these measurements require a six-axis load cell. Here, we perform simulations to investigate the extent to which each of the 20 possible "triplet" combinations of the six mechanical signals at the whisker base uniquely determine 3D contact point location. We perform this analysis for four different whisker profiles (shapes): tapered with and without intrinsic curvature, and cylindrical with and without intrinsic curvature. We show that whisker profile has a strong influence on the particular triplet(s) of signals that uniquely map to the 3D contact point. The triplet of bending moment, bending moment direction, and axial force produces unique mappings for tapered whiskers. Four different mappings are unique for a cylindrical whisker without intrinsic curvature, but only when large deflections are excluded. These results inform the neuroscience of vibrissotactile sensing and represent an important step toward the development of artificial whiskers for robotic applications.

SUBMITTER: Huet LA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5467137 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Tactile Sensing with Whiskers of Various Shapes: Determining the Three-Dimensional Location of Object Contact Based on Mechanical Signals at the Whisker Base.

Huet Lucie A LA Rudnicki John W JW Hartmann Mitra J Z MJZ

Soft robotics 20170601 2

Almost all mammals use their mystacial vibrissae (whiskers) as important tactile sensors. There are no sensors along the length of a whisker: all sensing is performed by mechanoreceptors at the whisker base. To use artificial whiskers as a sensing tool in robotics, it is essential to be able to determine the three-dimensional (3D) location at which a whisker has made contact with an object. With the assumption of quasistatic, frictionless, single-point contact, previous work demonstrated that th ...[more]

PMID: 28616371

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Project description:In all sensory modalities, the data acquired by the nervous system is shaped by the biomechanics, material properties, and the morphology of the peripheral sensory organs. The rat vibrissal (whisker) system is one of the premier models in neuroscience to study the relationship between physical embodiment of the sensor array and the neural circuits underlying perception. To date, however, the three-dimensional morphology of the vibrissal array has not been characterized. Quantifying array morphology is important because it directly constrains the mechanosensory inputs that will be generated during behavior. These inputs in turn shape all subsequent neural processing in the vibrissal-trigeminal system, from the trigeminal ganglion to primary somatosensory ("barrel") cortex. Here we develop a set of equations for the morphology of the vibrissal array that accurately describes the location of every point on every whisker to within ±5% of the whisker length. Given only a whisker's identity (row and column location within the array), the equations establish the whisker's two-dimensional (2D) shape as well as three-dimensional (3D) position and orientation. The equations were developed via parameterization of 2D and 3D scans of six rat vibrissal arrays, and the parameters were specifically chosen to be consistent with those commonly measured in behavioral studies. The final morphological model was used to simulate the contact patterns that would be generated as a rat uses its whiskers to tactually explore objects with varying curvatures. The simulations demonstrate that altering the morphology of the array changes the relationship between the sensory signals acquired and the curvature of the object. The morphology of the vibrissal array thus directly constrains the nature of the neural computations that can be associated with extraction of a particular object feature. These results illustrate the key role that the physical embodiment of the sensor array plays in the sensing process.

Dataset Information

Tactile Sensing with Whiskers of Various Shapes: Determining the Three-Dimensional Location of Object Contact Based on Mechanical Signals at the Whisker Base.

Publications

Tactile Sensing with Whiskers of Various Shapes: Determining the Three-Dimensional Location of Object Contact Based on Mechanical Signals at the Whisker Base.

Similar Datasets

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