Towards biomimetic vibrissal tactile sensing for robot exploration, navigation, and object recognition in hazardous environments

Arrays of actuated, whisker-like tactile sensors could prove useful for the guidance and control of robots in hazardous environments, particularly where the effectiveness of conventional vision sensors is compromised. This paper summarises recent research on biomimetic vibrissal sensing arrays for mobile robots, focusing on the design of the SCRATCHbot whiskered robot platform, and on progress towards algorithms for tactile object detection and recognition, and for robot navigation using vibrissal signals.