The robot vibrissal system: understanding mammalian sensorimotor co-ordination through biomimetics

We consider the problem of sensorimotor co-ordination in mammals through the lens of vibrissal touch, and via the methodology of embodied computational neuroscience—using biomimetic robots to synthesize and investigate models of mammalian brain architecture. The chapter focuses on five major brain sub-systems and their likely role in vibrissal system function—superior colliculus, basal ganglia, somatosensory cortex, cerebellum, and hippocampus. With respect to each of these we demonstrate how embodied modelling has helped elucidate their likely function in the brain of awake behaving animals. We also demonstrate how the appropriate co-ordination of these sub-systems, with a model of brain architecture, can give rise to integrated behaviour in a life-like whiskered robot.