Animal robots: Research foundation, key technologies and development forecasts

Abstract

<p indent="0mm">Animal robots are a class of bio-syncretic robots with the visual, auditory and tactile perception capabilities of animals. They make use of the animal’s inherent motor system and act directly on specific brain regions (nucleus) or nervous systems of animal carriers through simulated neural signals to induce neuronal activity in the relevant functional brain regions in order to achieve motor behavior control of the carriers. This type of special robots has natural and significant advantages in many aspects such as locomotor stability, flexibility, environmental adaptability and energy supply for its locomotion, overcoming the difficulties of traditional bionic robots in terms of distribution drive, environmental perception and energy supply. It has significant theoretical and application values and is one of the important research directions in the development of robotics. The research was highly integrated with animal intelligence and machine intelligence, involving animal behavior, neuroscience, microelectromechanical technology, mechanics and communication technology, and is a frontier area of multidisciplinary integration. These robots are expected to perform tasks that are not possible for humans or traditional bionic robots. It can be used in the field of public security to perform tasks such as counter-terrorism, search and rescue, and temporal awareness. In the civilian field, it can be widely used in environmental surveys and detection of confined spaces. In scientific research, it can be used as a research tool to explore the structure of motor neural networks and unknown areas such as neural information interaction patterns, neuroplasticity and functional repair. In this paper, we review the development of animal locomotor behavior regulation in the past <sc>20 years,</sc> systematically sort out the relationship between the animal locomotor nervous system and the locomotor behavior regulation, and briefly summarize the neural mechanisms of animal locomotor regulation, the generation and transmission of animal locomotor regulation signals, the composition and characteristics of signals regulating animal locomotor behaviors, and microelectrode fabrication and implantation techniques. According to the motion scenarios of different animal robots (in water, on land and in the air), the stimulation modulation methods, the brain areas (nucleus) that are stimulated and the corresponding movement modulation behaviors of the animal robots studied are summarized. The important research results of several typical animal robots are categorized and reviewed in terms of methods for locomotor modulation behaviors, optimization of remote control stimulation systems, and research on automatic navigation systems, and the research problems and key technical challenges that need to be broken through for future animal robots are summarized and discussed. Based on this, to effectively play the role of animal robots and meet the needs of practical applications, the paper outlines a framework for future research on animal robots based on the bottlenecks in animal behavioral control technology and summarizes and analyzes four aspects of animal robots, including research on motor neural control mechanisms, miniaturization of stimulation and control systems, application of communication and navigation technologies, and design strategies for self-powered systems. The future development trends and application prospects of animal robots are predicted.