Design And Implementation Of The Bionic Polarization Prototype For Navigation

The ability to navigate in a complex environment is crucial for both animals and robots. Many animals use different navigational strategies to reside in their living environment.For example,the desert ant Catagiyphis is able to forage in hundreds of meters away while return back to its nest precisely and on a straight line.Biologists' research shows that the desert ant Cataglyphis can navigate with the skylight polarization.It is because that there is a relatively stable polarization distribution mode in the sky,meanwhile,ant's visual nervous system is extremely sensitive to the orientation of skylight polarization.According to the biologists'research,this paper designs a bionic polarization sensor prototype based on embedd system.Four points are focused on this paper.Firstly,according to the navigation principle of the desert ant Cataglyphis,a polarization reception structure was designed,which built six polarization channels to receive skylight polarization.Filters,polarizer film and silicon photodiode were laid in the reception structure.Secondly,the system of sensor prototype was designed based on ARM.The system,including photoelectric conversion and logarithm amplification circuit,A/D conversion circuit,communication interface circuit based on RS-232 and ethernet,Flash and SDRAM memory circuit,can meet data conversion and acquition,data dealing and transmission.Thirdly,a unique Bootloader program was designed for system debugging and running.A minimal ethernet protocol stack,which includes UDP protocol,IP protocol,ARP protocol and Ethernet protocol,achieves the net communication ability of the sensor and reduces the complexity of programming at the same time.At last, experiments combining the hardware board and software were carried out and a sensor prototype was assembled.The outdoor test indicates that this prototype is stable and precise.It can meet farther research.