Neural Cellular Automata for Decentralized Sensing using a Soft Inductive Sensor Array for Distributed Manipulator Systems

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Dacre, Bailey, Bessone, Nicolas, Preti, Matteo Lo, Cafiso, Diana, Moreno, Rodrigo, Faíña, Andrés, Beccai, Lucia
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Dacre, Bailey
Bessone, Nicolas
Preti, Matteo Lo
Cafiso, Diana
Moreno, Rodrigo
Faíña, Andrés
Beccai, Lucia
author_facet Dacre, Bailey
Bessone, Nicolas
Preti, Matteo Lo
Cafiso, Diana
Moreno, Rodrigo
Faíña, Andrés
Beccai, Lucia
contents In Distributed Manipulator Systems (DMS), decentralization is a highly desirable property as it promotes robustness and facilitates scalability by distributing computational burden and eliminating singular points of failure. However, current DMS typically utilize a centralized approach to sensing, such as single-camera computer vision systems. This centralization poses a risk to system reliability and offers a significant limiting factor to system size. In this work, we introduce a decentralized approach for sensing and in a Distributed Manipulator Systems using Neural Cellular Automata (NCA). Demonstrating a decentralized sensing in a hardware implementation, we present a novel inductive sensor board designed for distributed sensing and evaluate its ability to estimate global object properties, such as the geometric center, through local interactions and computations. Experiments demonstrate that NCA-based sensing networks accurately estimate object position at 0.24 times the inter sensor distance. They maintain resilience under sensor faults and noise, and scale seamlessly across varying network sizes. These findings underscore the potential of local, decentralized computations to enable scalable, fault-tolerant, and noise-resilient object property estimation in DMS
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_01242
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Neural Cellular Automata for Decentralized Sensing using a Soft Inductive Sensor Array for Distributed Manipulator Systems
Dacre, Bailey
Bessone, Nicolas
Preti, Matteo Lo
Cafiso, Diana
Moreno, Rodrigo
Faíña, Andrés
Beccai, Lucia
Robotics
Machine Learning
In Distributed Manipulator Systems (DMS), decentralization is a highly desirable property as it promotes robustness and facilitates scalability by distributing computational burden and eliminating singular points of failure. However, current DMS typically utilize a centralized approach to sensing, such as single-camera computer vision systems. This centralization poses a risk to system reliability and offers a significant limiting factor to system size. In this work, we introduce a decentralized approach for sensing and in a Distributed Manipulator Systems using Neural Cellular Automata (NCA). Demonstrating a decentralized sensing in a hardware implementation, we present a novel inductive sensor board designed for distributed sensing and evaluate its ability to estimate global object properties, such as the geometric center, through local interactions and computations. Experiments demonstrate that NCA-based sensing networks accurately estimate object position at 0.24 times the inter sensor distance. They maintain resilience under sensor faults and noise, and scale seamlessly across varying network sizes. These findings underscore the potential of local, decentralized computations to enable scalable, fault-tolerant, and noise-resilient object property estimation in DMS
title Neural Cellular Automata for Decentralized Sensing using a Soft Inductive Sensor Array for Distributed Manipulator Systems
topic Robotics
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.01242