An Image-Based Method
for the Morphological Analysis of Tendrils
with 2D Piece-Wise Clothoid
Approximation Model
Jie Fan
1,2(B) , Francesco Visentin
2 , Emanuela Del Dottore
2 ,
and Barbara Mazzolai
2(B)
1 The BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pontedera, Italy
jie.fan@santannapisa.it
2 Center for Micro-BioRobotics@SSSA, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia,
Viale Rinaldo Piaggio, 34, 56025 Pontedera, Italy
{jie.fan,francesco.visentin,emanueladel.dottore,barbara.mazzolai}@iit.it
Abstract. In this work, we present an image-based method based on 2D
piece-wise clothoid for curvature approximation, that is used to analyse
the morphology of natural tendrils. Starting from our previous work,
here we present an advancement of the sorting skeletonization algorithm
which now can handle abrupt changes in the direction of the extracted
points. Furthermore, we present an automatic method to identify the
minimum number of 2D piece-wise clothoid spirals needed to represent
a given tendril. In our tests, we found that a range of 4–6 segments
were enough to correctly represent curling shapes with high accuracy
(R
2 > 0.9). The approach can be adopted for the morphological analysis
of continuum growing structures, to gain new insights for designing and
developing new intelligent robotic systems, such as controllable tendrillike soft robot for exploration of complex environments.
Keywords: Bio-inspiration · Morphological analysis · Soft robotics ·
2D piece-wise clothoid · Tendril-like structure · Dynamic programming.
1 Introduction
Bio-inspiration has been guiding and pushing the development of new robotic
artefacts. Starting from animals inspiring design and behavior of soft robots, e.g.,
octopus [1,2], elephant trunk [3], and other animals [4,5], now also plants are
the source for new paradigms in robotics [6] and are contributing to the development of innovative technologies [7]. Among many, climbing plants have peculiar
This work has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and
Innovation Program under Grant Agreement No. 824074 (GrowBot).
c
Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
V. Vouloutsi et al. (Eds.): Living Machines 2020, LNAI 12413, pp. 80–91, 2020.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64313-3_9
for the Morphological Analysis of Tendrils
with 2D Piece-Wise Clothoid
Approximation Model
Jie Fan
1,2(B) , Francesco Visentin
2 , Emanuela Del Dottore
2 ,
and Barbara Mazzolai
2(B)
1 The BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pontedera, Italy
jie.fan@santannapisa.it
2 Center for Micro-BioRobotics@SSSA, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia,
Viale Rinaldo Piaggio, 34, 56025 Pontedera, Italy
{jie.fan,francesco.visentin,emanueladel.dottore,barbara.mazzolai}@iit.it
Abstract. In this work, we present an image-based method based on 2D
piece-wise clothoid for curvature approximation, that is used to analyse
the morphology of natural tendrils. Starting from our previous work,
here we present an advancement of the sorting skeletonization algorithm
which now can handle abrupt changes in the direction of the extracted
points. Furthermore, we present an automatic method to identify the
minimum number of 2D piece-wise clothoid spirals needed to represent
a given tendril. In our tests, we found that a range of 4–6 segments
were enough to correctly represent curling shapes with high accuracy
(R
2 > 0.9). The approach can be adopted for the morphological analysis
of continuum growing structures, to gain new insights for designing and
developing new intelligent robotic systems, such as controllable tendrillike soft robot for exploration of complex environments.
Keywords: Bio-inspiration · Morphological analysis · Soft robotics ·
2D piece-wise clothoid · Tendril-like structure · Dynamic programming.
1 Introduction
Bio-inspiration has been guiding and pushing the development of new robotic
artefacts. Starting from animals inspiring design and behavior of soft robots, e.g.,
octopus [1,2], elephant trunk [3], and other animals [4,5], now also plants are
the source for new paradigms in robotics [6] and are contributing to the development of innovative technologies [7]. Among many, climbing plants have peculiar
This work has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and
Innovation Program under Grant Agreement No. 824074 (GrowBot).
c
Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
V. Vouloutsi et al. (Eds.): Living Machines 2020, LNAI 12413, pp. 80–91, 2020.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64313-3_9