Korean researchers remotely control turtles using non-invasive system

  • 25 Apr 2013

Researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology have managed to remotely control the movements of a turtle using a non-invasive steering system.

The team used completely untrained red-eared sliders for their research, and played with their innate obstacle-avoidance behaviour. If they see that something is blocking their path in one direction, they naturally move to avoid it. To control the turtles' movements, researchers attached a black half cylinder to the turtle, a little like the visor of a motorcycle helmet, but opaque and with a cover on the top to block any light from above. This was initially positioned around the turtle's rear end, but was pivoted around using a microcontroller and a servo motor to either the left or the right to partially block the turtles vision on one side.

This made the turtle believe there was an obstacle it needed to avoid on that side and so encouraged it to move in the other direction.

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

There have been a number of research projects to control the movements of animals, including invasive stimulations of insects' brains and muscles (cockroaches and moths), a similar technique used to control rats and mechanical control systems which provide remote commands to a well-trained dog. However, most of these either require the creature to be well-trained or rely on involuntary behaviour.

The research team form the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology was keen to find out if they could control an untrained animal in a non-invasive way that encouraged voluntary behaviour.

Turtles were chosen because it's easy to follow their movement and they can live in a range of different habitats on land and in water. The turtles were placed into an "arena" with their moveable visor and a marker on the top of them so they could be tracked -- using a Bayesian-based tracking algorithm -- by a camera from above.

The turtles were put on a winding path, drawn on the floor in black. The tracking system followed the turtles' trajectory and would continually move the visor to prompt the turtle to shift direction if it was looking like it was going off course.

The researchers explain in their study: "These experiments demonstrate that animal behaviour can effectively be guided by evoking instinctive behaviour essential for survival. Unlike the involuntary behaviour control schemes that have been previously proposed, which compel a response by stimulating the corresponding neural circuit (or musculature) regardless of the animal's intention, our approach is to guide the animal by elaborately inducing its voluntary instinctive behaviour."

They admit that different animals will need different devices to apply the specific stimulus that causes the innate behaviour, but want to apply the same framework to other animals with excellent vision: hawks, cats, lizards and carp. They think that the technology could be used to replace our dependence on robotic probes in deep sea environments.

You can read the full study, titled Remote Guidance of Untrained Turtles by Controlling Voluntary Instinct Behaviour on PLoSOne