On exploration of geometrically constrained space by medicinal leeches Hirudo verbana

TL;DR

This study investigates how medicinal leeches explore geometrically constrained spaces, revealing their preferences and navigation capabilities, which could inform the design of flexible, modular soft robots with adaptive behaviors.

Contribution

The paper provides experimental insights into leech behavior in constrained environments and explores their navigation abilities towards stimuli, supporting future bio-inspired robotic designs.

Findings

Leeches prefer exploring rooms near corridor ends.

Leeches can navigate towards vibration and chemical stimuli.

Leeches exhibit distinct exploration patterns in constrained spaces.

Abstract

Leeches are fascinating creatures: they have simple modular nervous circuitry m yet exhibit a rich spectrum of behavioural modes. Leeches could be ideal blue-prints for designing flexible soft robots which are modular, multi-functional, fault-tolerant, easy to control, capable for navigating using optical, mechanical and chemical sensorial inputs, have autonomous inter-segmental coordination and adaptive decision-making. With future designs of leech-robots in mind we study how leeches behave in geometrically constrained spaces. Core results of the paper deal with leeches exploring a row of rooms arranged along a narrow corridor. In laboratory experiments we find that rooms closer to ends of the corridor are explored by leeches more often than rooms in the middle of the corridor. Also, in series of scoping experiments, we evaluate leeches capabilities to navigating in mazes towards sources of vibration and chemo-attraction. We believe our results lay foundation for future developments of robots mimicking behaviour of leeches.