Robot Readings

Here are reviews and notes on papers. For starters they are all about distributed insect inspired robot locomotion.

A Comparison of Three Insect Inspired Locomotion Controllers Cynthia Ferrell, of the Brooks Lab. The paper was published sometime in the mid nineties

She compares a spectrum of approaches from particularly decentralized 'reflexive' based controllers (Beer, Chiel and Cruse) to somewhat the more centralized 'Patterned' controllers (which use less sensation and more central coordination of walking patterns) (Brooks, Collins and Stuart), with a look at 'Hybrid' control schemes incorporating elements of both. I should say now that, as of two weeks ago, I am a student of Beer.

When it comes down to it, Ferrell's results favor patterned approaches.

Questions: It sounded like implementation on a robot designed for centralized locomotion models interfered with the ability of the researchers to characterize the full pros and cons of each approach. In a few places they describe problems they encountered implementing the reflexive approaches at the pure 'reflexive' researchers didn't.

If there was a debate here, it happened a good decade+ ago. Where is the controversy now? To what extent were biologically inspired approaches implemented on either of the Martian rovers. Why not?