Miriam Fend

Research Interests: Whiskers in Nature and on a Robot.

Thorough analysis of the sensory signals allows to identify the characteristics of this specific sensory modality. By integrating the perceptual model into a robotic agent, we can test the adequacy of our understanding.

For more background:

• Biological Significance of Whiskers
• The Artificial Mouse: The Robot

Publications

2006

• Fend, M. (2006) Whiskers - How robots can learn from rats. PhD thesis
  
  
• Fend,M., Bovet, S. and Pfeifer, R. (2006) On the influence of morphology of tactile sensors for behavior and control. Journal of Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 54(8), pages 686-965
  
  

  2005

• Yokoi,H., Lungarella,M., Fend,M. and Pfeifer,R. (2005) Artificial whiskers: structural characterization and implications for adaptive robots. Journal of Robotics and Mechatronics, 17(5) pages 584-595.
  
  
• Fend, M.(2005), Whisker-based texture discrimination on a mobile robot,
  Proceedings of the 8th European Conference on Artificial Life (ECAL), Kent, September 2005, pages 302-311
  
  

  2004

• Yokoi, H., Fend, M. and Pfeifer, R.(2004), Development of a whisker sensor system and simulation of active whisking for agent navigation
  Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Syst ems (IROS), Sendai Japan, September, 2004, pp 607-612
  
  
• Hafner, V. V., Fend, M., König, P., Körding, K. P. (2004), Predicting properties of the rat somatosensory system by sparse coding ,
  Neural Information Processing Letters and Reviews, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 11-18, ISBN 89-89453-04-6 93560
  
  
• Fend, M., Abt, R., Diefenbacher, M., Bovet, S., and Krafft, M.(2004), Morphology and Learning - A Case Study on Whiskers,
  Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on the Simulation of Adaptive Behavior (SAB), Los Angeles, July 2004, pp. 114 - 122
  
  
• Bovet, S., Fend, M. and Pfeifer, R.(2004), Simulating Whisker Sensors - on the Role of Material Properties for Morphology, Behavior and Evolution,
  Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on the Simulation of Adaptive Behavior (SAB), Los Angeles, July 2004, pp. 122 - 130
  
  
• Fend, M., Bovet, S., and Hafner, V.(2004), The Artificial Mouse - A Robot with Whiskers and Vision,
  Proceedings of the 35th International Symposium on Robotics (ISR), Paris, March 2004
  

  2003

  
  
• Fend, M., Bovet, S., Yokoi,H. and Pfeifer, R.(2003), An active artificial whisker array for texture discrimination,
  Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Las Vegas, October 2003, Vol. II, pages 1044-1049
  
  
• Fend, M., Yokoi,H. and Pfeifer, R.(2003), Optimal morphology of a biologically-inspired whisker array on an obstacle-avoiding robot,
  Proceedings of the 7th European Conference on Artificial Life (ECAL), Dortmund, September 2003, pages 771-780
  
  
• Hafner, V. V., Fend, M., Lungarella, M., Pfeifer, R., König, P., Körding, K. P. (2003), Optimal coding for naturally occurring whisker deflections,
  Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Neural Information Processing (ICONIP), Istanbul, June 2003, pages 805-812
  
  

  Previous work

• Carol A. Murphy, Miriam Fend, Holger Russig, and Joram Feldon (2001). "Latent inhibition, but not prepulse inhibition, is reduced during withdrawal from an escalating dosage schedule of amphetamine", Behavioral Neuroscience, Vol. 115(6):1247-56.

• Miriam Fend(2001). "Overexpression of early growth response proteins using viral vectors", Diploma thesis. Available upon request.

Teaching

• Neural Networks, 2002
• Artificial Life, 2003
• The AI lectures from Tokyo, 2003
• Weiterbildungskurs "Einführung in die Künstliche Intelligenz für Mittelschul-Lehrer, 2004
• Artificial Intelligence, 2004

Talks

• Optimal Morphology of a biologically-inspired whiskersarray, ECAL 2003, Dortmund, Germany
• "Neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence", for the Graduiertenkolleg Neuroscience, Tübingen, February 2003
• "A synthetic approach to the rat whisker system: the artificial mouse", Barrel Cortex meeting, February 2004, Lausanne, Switzerland
• "The Artificial Mouse - a robot with whiskers and vision", ISR 2004, Paris, France
• "Whisker-based texture discrimination", ECAL 2006, Kent, Great Britain

Articles about/mentioning my work

• Mouse Robot Senses With Whiskers, News at Discovery.com, 07/12/2005
• Die AMouse ertastet ihre Umwelt , Horizonte (Magazine of the Swiss National Science Foundation), September 2003
• Kopflose Intelligenz , Weltwoche 01/2004
• Robot uses whiskers to get around NewScientist, 30.September 2004
• Die "Amouse" ist keine Maus, aber sie tut so NZZ am Sonntag, 9. Januar 2005
• "Ein Roboter der mit dem Schnurrbart sieht", Unijournal volume 4, pp 8-9 (2005)

phone: ++41 - 1 - 635 45 80

 last change: 11.01.2005