  My research objective is to explicitly bridge the gap between high
computational performance and low power dissipation of robot on-board hardware
by designing a bio-inspired tapered whisker neuromorphic computing (also called
reservoir computing) system for offroad robot environment perception and
navigation, that centres the interaction between a robot's body and its
environment. Mobile robots performing tasks in unknown environments need to
traverse a variety of complex terrains, and they must be able to reliably and
quickly identify and characterize these terrains to avoid getting into
potentially challenging or catastrophic circumstances. To solve this problem, I
drew inspiration from animals like rats and seals, just relying on whiskers to
perceive surroundings information and survive in dark and narrow environments.
Additionally, I looked to the human cochlear which can separate different
frequencies of sound. Based on these insights, my work addresses this need by
exploring the physical whisker-based reservoir computing for quick and
cost-efficient mobile robots environment perception and navigation step by
step. This research could help us understand how the compliance of the
biological counterparts helps robots to dynamically interact with the
environment and provides a new solution compared with current methods for robot
environment perception and navigation with limited computational resources,
such as Mars.
