Interactive web dashboard displaying MiRo-E cognitive architecture with live data displays
MiRo is a biomimetic robot mammal with a cognitive architecture based on the mammalian brain (Mitchinson & Prescott, 2016). However, it is not normally possible to access the data and processes underlying this architecture that give rise to the robot's behaviour.
The MiRo dashboard allows users to observe the activity of these systems during interactions with the robot, giving insight into the robot's actions and reactions. The dashboard also features short informational overlays to explain the similarities and differences between key aspects of MiRo's cognitive architecture and those of a real mammal.
The MiRo dashboard assumes you already have the latest MiRo MDK installed, either on your computer to run in simulation or on a physical MiRo robot.
You will also need to install dash, dash-daq, and dash-bootstrap-components for the web frontend, and opencv-python-headless for image processing. It's assumed you already have MDK prerequisites including rospy installed.
Clone the dashboard folder into mdk/share/python/miro2/ and run python app.py to start the dashboard. The dashboard will be available at localhost:8050.
Buxton, D. R., Kerdegari, H., Mokaram, S., Mitchinson, B., & Prescott, T. J. (2019). A Window into the Robot ‘mind’: Using a Graphical Real-Time Display to Provide Transparency of Function in a Brain-Based Robot. In U. Martinez-Hernandez, V. Vouloutsi, A. Mura, M. Mangan, M. Asada, T. J. Prescott, & P. F. M. J. Verschure (Eds.), Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems (pp. 316–320). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24741-6_28
Mitchinson, B., & Prescott, T. J. (2016). MIRO: A Robot 'Mammal' with a Biomimetic Brain-Based Control System. In N. F. Lepora, A. Mura, M. Mangan, P. F. M. J. Verschure, M. Desmulliez, & T. J. Prescott (Eds.), Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems (Vol. 9793, pp. 179–191). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42417-0_17
Dashboard design and code is based on the original MiRo GUI by Hamideh Kerdegari.