Connecting Artificial Brains to Robots in a Comprehensive Simulation Framework: The Neurorobotics Platform

Egidio Falotico, Lorenzo Vannucci, Alessandro Ambrosano, Ugo Albanese, Stefan Ulbrich, Juan Camilo Vasquez Tieck, Georg Hinkel, Jacques Kaiser, Igor Peric, Oliver Denninger, Nino Cauli, Murat Kirtay, Arne Roennau, Gudrun Klinker, Axel von Arnim, Luc Guyot, Daniel Peppicelli, Pablo Martínez-Cañada, Eduardo Ros, Patrick Maier et al. (12 additional authors not shown)

Abstract: Combined efforts in the fields of neuroscience, computer science, and biology allowed to design biologically realistic models of the brain based on spiking neural networks. For a proper validation of these models, an embodiment in a dynamic and rich sensory environment, where the model is exposed to a realistic sensory-motor task, is needed. Due to the complexity of these brain models that, at the current stage, cannot deal with real-time constraints, it is not possible to embed them into a real-world task. Rather, the embodiment has to be simulated as well. While adequate tools exist to simulate either complex neural networks or robots and their environments, there is so far no tool that allows to easily establish a communication between brain and body models. The Neurorobotics Platform is a new web-based environment that aims to fill this gap by offering scientists and technology developers a software infrastructure allowing them to connect brain models to detailed simulations of robot bodies and environments and to use the resulting neurorobotic systems for in silico experimentation. In order to simplify the workflow and reduce the level of the required programming skills, the platform provides editors for the specification of experimental sequences and conditions, environments, robots, and brain–body connectors. In addition to that, a variety of existing robots and environments are provided. This work presents the architecture of the first release of the Neurorobotics ...