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The CIRCE (Chiroptera Inspired Robotic CEphaloid) project is a collaborative EU-project within the Proactive Initiative 2001 in Bionics entitled LIFE-LIKE PERCEPTION SYSTEMS (LPS).
| The goal of the CIRCE project is to reproduce, at a functional level, the echolocation system of bats by constructing a bionic bat head that can then be used to systematically investigate how the world is not just perceived but actively explored by bats. This bionic bat head is of similar size to a real bat head to reproduce the relevant physics and consist of an emission/reception system capable of generating/processing bat vocalisations in real-time, a multi-degree of freedom mechanical system to allow realistic pinnae movement. Constructing the bionic head itself is one objective but a second objective is to gain more insight into neural sensory-data encoding from using the head in echolocation tasks routinely executed by bats. |
To attain the double objective - constructing a bionic bat head of size similar to a real bat head and to use that bionic bat head to gain more insight into neural encoding of sensory data in an active sensing context - we concentrated our efforts on developing a number of key components:
- New, small, ultrasonic transducers
- Driver electronics to efficiently drive these transducers both for the emission and the reception subsystem
- New neuromorphic cochlea models capable of extracting biologically plausible features from the complex echoes. These models are implemented on purpose-built hardware, i.e. FPGA technology, to guarantee real-time operation.
- Pinna shapes evolved with genetic algorithms
- New small, actuating system to control pinna movement
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