While the original goal for developing robots is replacing humans in dangerous and tedious tasks, the final target shall be completely mimicking the human cognitive and motor behavior. Hence, building detailed computational models for the human brain is one of the reasonable ways to attain this. The cerebellum is one of the key players in our neural system to guarantee dexterous manipulation and coordinated movements as concluded from lesions in that region. Studies suggest that it acts as a forward model providing anticipatory corrections for the sensory signals based on observed discrepancies from the reference values. While most studies consider providing the teaching signal as error in joint-space, few studies consider the error in task-space and even fewer consider the spiking nature of the cerebellum on the cellular-level. In this study, a detailed cellular-level forward cerebellar model is developed, including modeling of Golgi and Basket cells which are usually neglected in previous studies. To preserve the biological features of the cerebellum in the developed model, a hyperparameter optimization method tunes the network accordingly. The efficiency and biological plausibility of the proposed cerebellar-based controller is then demonstrated under different robotic manipulation tasks reproducing motor behavior observed in human reaching experiments.

Different learning modes and mechanisms allow faster and better acquisition of skills as widely studied in humans and many animals. Specific neurons, called mirror neurons, are activated in the same way whether an action is performed or simply observed. This suggests that observing others performing movements allows to reinforce our motor abilities. This implies the presence of a biological mechanism that allows creating models of others' movements and linking them to the self-model for achieving mirroring. Inspired by such ability, we propose to build a map of movements executed by a teaching agent and mirror the agent's state to the robot's configuration space. Hence, in this study, a neural network is proposed to integrate a motor cortex-like differential map transforming motor plans from task-space to joint-space motor commands and a static map correlating joint-spaces of the robot and a teaching agent. The differential map is developed based on spiking neural networks while the static map is built as a self-organizing map. The developed neural network allows the robot to mirror the actions performed by a human teaching agent to its own joint-space and the reaching skill is refined by the complementary examples provided. Hence, experiments are conducted to quantify the improvement achieved thanks to the proposed learning approach and control scheme.

In this work, a spiking neural network (SNN) is proposed for approximating differential sensorimotor maps of robotic systems. The computed model is used as a local Jacobian-like projection that relates changes in sensor space to changes in motor space. The SNN consists of an input (sensory) layer and an output (motor) layer connected through plastic synapses, with inter-inhibitory connections at the output layer. Spiking neurons are modeled as Izhikevich neurons with a synaptic learning rule based on spike timing-dependent plasticity. Feedback data from proprioceptive and exteroceptive sensors are encoded and fed into the input layer through a motor babbling process. A guideline for tuning the network parameters is proposed and applied along with the particle swarm optimization technique. Our proposed control architecture takes advantage of biologically plausible tools of an SNN to achieve the target reaching task while minimizing deviations from the desired path, and consequently minimizing the execution time. Thanks to the chosen architecture and optimization of the parameters, the number of neurons and the amount of data required for training are considerably low. The SNN is capable of handling noisy sensor readings to guide the robot movements in real-time. Experimental results are presented to validate the control methodology with a vision-guided robot.

Neurorobotics has emerged from the alliance between neuroscience and robotics. It pursues the investigation of reproducing living organism-like behaviors in robots by means of the embodiment of computational models of the central nervous system. This perspective article discusses the current trend of implementing tools for the pressing challenge of early-diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases and how neurorobotics approaches can help. Recently, advances in this field have allowed the testing of some neuroscientific hypotheses related to brain diseases, but the lack of biological plausibility of developed brain models and musculoskeletal systems has limited the understanding of the underlying brain mechanisms that lead to deficits in motor and cognitive tasks. Key aspects and methods to enhance the reproducibility of natural behaviors observed in healthy and impaired brains are proposed in this perspective. In the long term, the goal is to move beyond finding therapies and look into how researchers can use neurorobotics to reduce testing on humans as well as find root causes for disease.

This paper presents a method for computing sensorimotor maps of braided continuum robots driven by pneumatic actuators. The method automatically creates a lattice-like representation of the sensorimotor map that preserves the topology of the input space by arranging its nodes into clusters of related data. Deformation trajectories can be simply represented with adjacent nodes whose values smoothly change along the lattice curve; this facilitates the computation of controls and the prediction of deformations in systems with unknown mechanical properties. The proposed model has an adaptive structure that can recalibrate to cope with changes in the mechanism or actuators. An experimental study with a robotic prototype is conducted to validate the proposed method.