Abstract
This paper presents a biologically inspired algorithm to control an autonomous robot tracking a target. The algorithm is designed to mimic the behavior of a human neutrophil, a type of white blood cell that travels to sites of infection and digests bacterial antagonists. Neutrophils are known to be highly sensitive to low levels of chemical stimuli, robust to noise, and are capable navigating unknown terrain, all qualities that would be desired in an autonomous robot. In this paper we model a neutrophil as a collaborative control system, demonstrate the robustness of this algorithm, and suggest a computationally cheap method of implementation. Our simulations show that the performance of the robot is unaffected by constant disturbances and it is robust to random noise levels up to 5 times the tracking signal. Additionally, we demonstrate that this algorithm, as well the current models of neutrophil chemotaxis, are equivalent to a sensor fusion problem that optimizes directional sensing in the presence of noise.
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This picture was taken from a film done by David Rogers at Vanderbilt University circa 1950, The movie can be found at, http://expmed.bwh.harvard.edu/projects/motility.html
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Onsum, M.D., Arkin, A.P. (2005). Autonomous Mobile Robot Control Based on White Blood Cell Chemotaxis. In: Danos, V., Schachter, V. (eds) Computational Methods in Systems Biology. CMSB 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 3082. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-25974-9_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-25974-9_2
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-25375-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-25974-9
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