Scott Heath

Lingodroids are language learning robots that play games to construct shared lexicons. These fascinating mobile robots have learnt lexicons for places, distances, directions, and time. Our latest work demonstrates how to handle referential uncertainty, that is, how to resolve a word’s meaning between multiple candidates. Further, we have demonstrated language learning between robots that have different embodiment and cognitive capabilities. They differed in their sensors (camera images versus laser ranges); [...]

In this study a spiking network controls the iRat in real time. The study demonstrates how the neural controller directs the rat animat’s movement towards temporal stimuli of the appropriate frequency using an approach based on Braitenberg Vehicles. The circuit responds robustly after four cycles when first detecting a light pulsing at 1 Hz, and rapidly after one-to-three cycles when primed by recent experiences with the same frequency. This study [...]

Rats have long since been used in a wide range of behavioral studies. This project is ongoing work to use the iRat as modeling platform for neuroscience studies, for testing neural models of bio-inspired navigation algorithms and for behavioral studies showing rat-robot interactions. Many of the rats observed the iRat, peeping over the wall to check where it was, and often tracking around behind it. Over a period of four days, five [...]

A telerobot, is a telepresence device that allows a user to interact with a robot over the internet. There are few active public telerobots on the internet. This work describes a new Internet telerobot framework suitable for autonomous mobile robots and designed for user edutainment. Users could give the robot navigation goals. The results demonstrated a reliable autonomous mobile robot system that, within 24 hours of continuous operation, reached 447 goals, traveled [...]

OpenRatSLAM, is an open-source C++ (ROS / OpenCV) and MATLAB version of RatSLAM. RatSLAM is a robot SLAM system based on the neural processes underlying navigation in the rodent brain, in particular the hippocampus.