Environment reconstruction and navigation with electric sense based on a Kalman filter

Electric fish sense the perturbations of a self generated electric field through their electroreceptive skin. This sense allows them to navigate and reconstruct their environment in conditions where vision and sonar cannot work. In this article, we use a sensor inspired by this sense to address both problems of locating and estimating the size of small objects (electrolocation) and navigating in a tank. . Based on a Kalman filter, any small object in the surroundings of the motion controlled sensor can be modeled as an equivalent sphere whose location is well estimated by the filter. As a first application to the problem of navigation, the filter is included into a closed feedback loop in order to achieve wall following in a tank. Our experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of this approach.