Biologically Inspired Systems Lab

The objective of this lab is to advance the state-of-the-art in the area of biologically inspired sensing and control systems. That is, the development of human-biology inspired sensors and actuators and the investigation of methods for sensory-motoric information fusion and perception. Achieving this objective would provide on one hand more reliable, robust, accurate quality testing and measurement devices for purely industrial purposes; on the other hand, it contributes to the development of artificial intelligent systems, for instance an artificial sensory head (ASH), helping humans to avoid repeated, unskillful and/or hazardous perception tasks.

Our research focus is the development of

• electronic nose and tongue: compact sensors which are able to perform human-like smell and taste sensing in a variety of real-world environments that have not been specifically modified to accomodate the sensors;
• biologically inspired sensory information fusion and active perception methods: methods that make reference to anatomical localization and biological functions for the purpose of information fusion and active perception involving heterogenous sensors;
• artificial sensory head: the design of a sensor platform with all five primary human senses and which uses a combination of EAP and Mc Kibben pneumatic artificial muscles to imitate the ``biological'' mouth, neck, and possibly eye movements.

Our research methodology is based on the integration between experimentation with biologically inspired sensors, the formal design of algorithms taking into account human-bilogy aspects. The experimental work is conducted in several domains, including: robot navigation by smell and sound, food-quality inspection, and service/rescue robots.

Contact person:  Selim Eskiizmirliler

Lab's home page:  http://www.aass.oru.se/Research/Sensors/