A Model of Sensorimotor coordination in the Rat Whisker System
Ben Mitchinson, Martin Pearson, Chris Melhuish and Tony J. Prescott
Simulation of Adaptive Behavior 2006 (SAB 2006)
Rome, Italy, 25-29 September 2006
Summary
The rat has a sophisticated tactile sensory system centred around the facial whiskers. During normal behaviour, rats sweep their longer whiskers (macrovibrissae) through the environment to obtain large-scale tactile information, whilst gathering small-scale information with the sensory apparatus around their snout. The macrovibrissae are actively and differentially controlled. Using high-speed video recording, we have observed that the temporal and spatial parameters of whisking pattern generation are modulated to match environmental features such as the position and orientation of nearby surfaces. Movements of the macrovibrissae are also closely co-ordinated with those of the head and body allowing the animal to locate and orient to interesting stimuli detected through whisker contact. In this paper, we present a hybrid (spiking-neuron/arithmetic) model of the neural systems underlying these observed adaptive sensorimotor behaviours, and demonstrate their performance in a simulated robot with rat-like morphology. We also report progress towards embedding these control systems in a physical rat-like robot.