Simulating Whisker Sensors — on the Role of Material Properties for Morphology, Behavior and Evolution

Whiskers have recently received an increasing interest as touch sensors capable of providing rich information about the close environment of an agent. Many different animal species – especially rodents – heavily rely on them for tasks as varied as short-range navigation and object exploration. For roboticists, whiskers are not only interesting because of the unique physical process on which they are based (which is e.g. independent of illumination - a non trivial problem that vision-based modalities have to deal with), but also because of the potential overlap with other sensory modalities. Although there is a considerable body of literature about whiskers, some questions remain unanswered. For example: is there any appropriate morphological arrangement of the whiskers for a given task, since this arrangement is highly preserved within many animal species? What are the advantages of using flexible touch sensors rather than rigid ones? In this paper, we present a software that we have developed for the simulation and investigation of agents using whisker sensors. As an illustration of possible applications with this tool, we then present some results about the implications of the material properties of the whiskers on morphology, behavior and evolution.