Development Of Distributed Remote Neural Stimulator For Robot Pigeon

Robot-pigeon refers to the robotic animals that regulate the behavior of the pigeon by applying impulse electrical signals to its nervous system,so that the pigeon can complete the corresponding tasks according to human's expectation or intention.It's different from other robot-animals,the robot-pigeon has many advantages such as the wide range of movement,the low energy consumption and the good concealment performance,which is of great value in the field of both military and civilian use.For the robot-pigeon,the neural stimulator which can generate pulse electrical signals is the core component,and its performance determines the final control effect.However,most of the current neural stimulators are mainly used for indoor animals,with short transmission distance and large volume,which are difficult to meet the application requirements of birds such as pigeons.According to the anatomical structure and behavioral characteristics of pigeon,this paper developed a hand-held remote nerve-stimulator for robot-pigeon by using flexible printing technology and distributed design,and tested its performance from static,in vitro and in vivo aspects.The main work is as follows:1)In order to improve the flight balance of the robotic pigeon,the remote nervestimulator was designed with a distributed structure.The neuro-stimulator is composed of three parts,the stimulation terminal,the relay terminal,and the positioning terminal,which wirelessly communicate with each other.These terminals are responsible for different functions.The stimulation terminal is responsible for the production of pulsed electrical signals.The relay terminal is responsible for remote communication with the handheld terminal.The positioning terminal is responsible for obtaining the real-time position of the pigeon.Three modules were placed on different parts of the pigeon's body.This pattern can not only greatly reduce the weight of a single part of the body,but also improve the balance of pigeons.2)Adopting the flexible printing process,a cube-shaped stimulating terminal module with the battery inside and the circuit board outside was fabricated.The module has a length,width,and height of 1.67×1.67×1.87 cm and weighs about 4.7g.Compared with the traditional planar superimposed structure,the cubic package structure greatly reduces the volume of the stimulation terminal.In addition,the flexible printing process further reduces the weight of the stimulation terminal.The reduction in size and weight has important practical value for the robot pigeon.3)The pigeon's trajectory tracking was developed based on mobile phone software.It not only combines with the handheld remote control,but also realizes the conversion of the control device from the computer terminal to the handheld terminal,and improves the convenience of the stimulator control.Using Android mobile phone software and network server,the program design of server configuration,positioning and remote control is completed.In addition,the positioning terminal also supports simultaneous online access by multiple users to the real-time position data of the robot pigeon,which can more accurately track the position of the pigeon and observe the effect of stimulation control.