Using robots to model animals: a cricket test

The sensorimotor problems faced by animals and by robots have much in common, yet identifying this similarity has so far led to very few successful attempts to implement specific biological neural control structures on robots. One major limitation is that understanding of the biological mechanisms is insufficient for straightforward installation. However, using robots as a method of physically modeling animal systems can potentially contribute to our understanding of these mechanisms. This approach is employed in an investigation of phonotaxis (sound-seeking) in crickets. The process of building a robot forms the basis of a critical evaluation of the neuroethological evidence about the cricket, and generates an alternative hypothesis to explain this evidence. The explanatory power of this hypothesis is explored by testing and analyzing the behaviour of the robot that embodies it. The robot behaved like the cricket, competently and robustly finding its way to a specific sound source under a variety of conditions. It is argued that the methodology is more appropriate than symbolic simulation for the kinds of problems raised in the investigation of sensorimotor behaviour in animals and robots.