Design of a bioinspired robophysical antenna for insect-scale tactile perception and navigation

2025-07-31

AI Summary

Insect-scale robots face significant challenges in tactile perception and autonomous navigation within confined, complex environments due to stringent constraints on sensor size, weight, and power consumption. Method: Inspired by the antennae of the American cockroach, we propose a bioinspired flexible antenna sensor featuring a multi-segment compliant laminated architecture integrated with capacitive angular sensing, enabling high-precision, low-power, multimodal tactile perception driven solely by passive deformation. Contribution/Results: The sensor measures 73.7 × 15.6 × 2.1 mm³, weighs 491 mg, and consumes only 32 mW. It achieves a static bending measurement error of 0.79°, with distance prediction and gap estimation errors of 7.75% and 6.73%, respectively. This work represents the first demonstration of a distributed tactile sensing system at the millimeter scale capable of simultaneous texture, distance, and gap recognition—establishing a new paradigm for autonomous exploration in micro-robotics.

Technology Category

Intelligent Robots: Multimodal Perception & Sensor FusionMachine Learning: Bio-inspired LearningMultiagent Systems: Distributed Problem Solving

Application Category

Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Efficiency and scalability of Web search enginesSecurity and Privacy: Large-scale security measurementsSystems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Experiences and lessons learnt from Web-based algorithms and system deployments

Abstract

The American cockroach (Periplaneta americana) uses its soft antennae to guide decision making by extracting rich tactile information from tens of thousands of distributed mechanosensors. Although tactile sensors enable robust, autonomous perception and navigation in natural systems, replicating these capabilities in insect-scale robots remains challenging due to stringent size, weight, and power constraints that limit existing sensor technologies. To overcome these limitations, we introduce CITRAS (Cockroach Inspired Tactile Robotic Antenna Sensor), a bioinspired, multi-segmented, compliant laminate sensor with embedded capacitive angle sensors. CITRAS is compact (73.7x15.6x2.1 mm), lightweight (491 mg), and low-power (32 mW), enabling seamless integration with miniature robotic platforms. The segmented compliant structure passively bends in response to environmental stimuli, achieving accurate hinge angle measurements with maximum errors of just 0.79 degree (quasistatic bending) and 3.58 degree (dynamic bending). Experimental evaluations demonstrate CITRAS' multifunctional tactile perception capabilities: predicting base-to-tip distances with 7.75 % error, estimating environmental gap widths with 6.73 % error, and distinguishing surface textures through differential sensor response. The future integration of this bioinspired tactile antenna in insect-scale robots addresses critical sensing gaps, promising enhanced autonomous exploration, obstacle avoidance, and environmental mapping in complex, confined environments.

Problem

• Replicating cockroach tactile perception in insect-scale robots
• Overcoming size, weight, power constraints in robotic sensors
• Enabling autonomous navigation in complex environments via bioinspired antenna

Innovation

• Bioinspired multi-segmented compliant laminate sensor
• Embedded capacitive angle sensors for accuracy
• Compact lightweight low-power tactile robotic antenna