Neuromorphic engineering has been taking inspiration from biology to create artificial systems, but up until now none of those systems has been more successful than any biological system. An insect can perform tasks like collision avoidance far more successfully than the most sophisticated artificial system. On the other hand, neuromorphic systems have helped substantially to advance our understanding of behavioral, computational and neurobiological mechanisms in insects, specially those involving sensory motor control. Hybrid biorobotic systems formed by interactions between biological and artificial systems are an alternative platform for studying those issues. This thesis mainly consists of the development of the interface between the biological and artificial system of a mobile biorobot. This involves the design and fabrication of an electrophysiology amplification, filtering, and data acquisition board tailored to insect recordings. The constructed board produces reliable data comparable to that obtained from commercially available electrophysiology equipment, but because of its size and wireless communication is more suitable for experiments involving mobile robotics. The board was used to collect real-time electrophysiological data from living hawkmoths. The data was processed by the board and it was used to successfully control a mobile robot in a closed-loop environment. The results obtained from this experiment suggest that this platform will work on various experiments of similar nature.
Leslie I. Ortiz, "A Mobile Electrophysiology Board for Autonomous Biorobotics," MS thesis (advisor: Charles M. Higgins), Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Arizona, December 2006.