Research On Efficient Payload And Electrical Stimulation System Of Insect Mobile Platform

Insects exhibit some impressive modes of locomotion over eons of evolution.However,even state-of-art artificial bionic robots are far behind their natural exemplars in terms of all aspects of mobility due to the limited knowledge of insect physiology and current control technology.The insect-computer hybrid robot is a hybridization of a living insect and a microcontroller.Compared with traditional robots,the motion is generated by insects instead of artificial actuators.Therefore,this type of hybrid robot has the advantages of low energy consumption,stable motion,and compatibility in harsh environment applications.Environmental sensing is one potentially useful application of such biobotics.Carrying the tiny backpack equipped with wireless sensors,swarms of controllable insect biobots carried could be dispatched in narrow and hazardous areas inaccessible to humans as a mobile platform for environmental sensing.This thesis chooses beetles as the study animal for insect ethology research and designs a wireless vision and acoustics system,including the insect-carried slave electronic backpack,the host base station,and the PC software.The ultimate goal is to display the image and sound information in real-time on PC software and remotely control the flight behavior of beetles.The main research work of the thesis can be summarized as follows:The theories related to beetle flight maneuver and the muscular stimulation methods are studied.The structural and functional properties of nerves and muscles related to beetle flight behaviors are analyzed.Based on entomotomy,the spatial distribution of those flight muscles and corresponding electrode implantation tracks is determined by anatomy.Aiming at the goal of flight behavior control based on electrical stimulation,the methods of flight cessation control and modulation control through dorsal longitudinal muscles(DLM)and the dorsoventral muscles(DVM)combined stimulation is proposed,the contralateral steering control through basalar muscles stimulation is also conducted.The circuit for wireless image and sound data sampling as well as insect behavior control is designed.After comparing a variety of wireless communication protocols,the Bluetooth network based on the NRF52840 microcontroller is determined.After a comparison of several commercial image sensors and sound sensors,the image sensing unit based on HM01B0,and sound sensing unit based on both the analog microphone ICS-40310 and the ultra-low-power op-amp MCP6141 are chosen.Furthermore,the electrical stimulator interface and the power supply system of the backpack are designed.The circuit for wireless and wired data transmission in the base station and the corresponding power supply system are designed.The micro-welding process and waterproof packaging process of the electronic backpack are proposed.The control algorithm program of wireless image and sound sensing and insect behavior control are researched.The Bluetooth 5.0 network is first constructed.And the algorithm of clock generation,register configuration,and data reading procedure of the image sensor are proposed.And the algorithm of microphone data sampling is designed.The low-power algorithm of the wireless system and the program for wireless communication and the generation of electrical stimulation pulses are researched.The program algorithm for Bluetooth communication and USB communication are finally elaborated.The human-computer interaction software of the wireless system is designed.Aiming at the convenient configuration of insect stimulation and sensor parameters,a parameter configuration module is designed.Aiming at the requirements of high-speed wired transmission of sensor data,the USB communication module is designed;For the real-time restoration of sensor data and transmission rate measurement,the data splitting module,the image display module,the image frame rate measurement module,and the audio playback-saving module are designed in turn.The performance test of wireless environmental image and sound sensing and insect behavior control systems is implemented.Firstly,The quality of image and sound data,the wireless communication range,and the power consumption of the electronic backpack are evaluated,respectively.Secondly,the flight cessation control,flight modulation control,and flight steering control experiments are carried out under multiple test conditions respectively.The experiment results demonstrate that the beetle’s crawling motion did not cause much image distortion;the system can stream QQVGA monochrome video and simultaneously ambient audio information in different modes.The reliable communication distance of the system is 160 m,and the operational time is up to 9 hours at the 1fps image transmission mode.And it has been proved that the beetle stops and modulates its flight in response to DLM-DVM combined stimulation(positive pulses at 3.5V,50 Hz,50% duty cycle)and DLM-DVM combined stimulation(alternating positive and negative pulses at 2V,100 Hz,and 10% duty cycle),respectively;and the positive pulse of 3 V,100 Hz,20% duty cycle applied to basalar muscles induces contralateral turning flight.The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of manipulating the flight behavior of beetle biobots and utilizing it as a mobile sensing platform.