The Design Of A Portable Telemetry System Based On Embedded System Platform For Animal-robots

The research on animal-robot via electric stimulation dates from 1990s. It is the integration outcome of modern information science, neuroscience and microelectronics manufacturing technology. Compared to traditional robot, animal-robot is not only superior in locomotion and power support, but also performs great concealment and adaptation. That makes animal-robots have wide application prospect in many special circumstances such as military detection, searching for victims in dangerous environment et al. On the other hand, both electrical stimulation and neuronal activity recording are fundamental tools in neurophysiology, the combining of stimulation and recording to bring a feedback of control and measurement is highly useful in studying the neural correlates of stimulation and responses.In this thesis, we propose an animal-robot telemetry system solution for both brain stimulation and neuronal activity recording based on embedded system PDA-style platform. This embedded system PDA platform uses Samsung S3C2410 as its microprocessor, and its operating system is embedded Linux. Our PDA communicates with backpack via Bluetooth. In other to break through the speed limitation of general UART, an USB transceiver circuit is needed as a bridge between an USB port of our PDA and the Bluetooth module. The PDA can apply an USB adapter to transmit neuronal signals acquired from animal-robots to a PC terminal via wireless LAN. The PDA can also select an USB flash disk as an annex to store the neuronal signals. Users interact with our PDA through a touch screen. For the sake of high experiment efficiency, a remote controller is provided for different stimulation instructions. Qt/Embedded is selected as embedded application GUI. Users can configure the stimulation parameters, send the stimulation instructions via the application. Neuronal signals storage, display and transmission are also controlled by the application. Our PDA can control the backpack to produce four-channel stimulus and acquire two-channel neuronal signals in real time. The PDA-style telemetry system based on embedded system for animal-robot is a portable system that can work in complicated circumstances.