Decentralized Control Scheme for Myriapod Locomotion That Exploits Local Force Feedback
Legged animals exhibit adaptive and resilient locomotion through their inter-limb coordination. Our long-term goal of this study is to develop a systematic design scheme for legged robots by elucidating the inter-limb coordination mechanism of various leg
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Research Institute of Electrical Communication, Tohoku University, 2-1-1 Katahira, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8577, Japan {tkano,k.yasui,owaki,ishiguro}@riec.tohoku.ac.jp 2 Japan Science and Technology Agency, CREST, 4-1-8 Honcho, Kawaguchi, Saitama 332-0012, Japan http://www.cmplx.riec.tohoku.ac.jp/
Abstract. Legged animals exhibit adaptive and resilient locomotion through their inter-limb coordination. Our long-term goal of this study is to develop a systematic design scheme for legged robots by elucidating the inter-limb coordination mechanism of various legged animals from a unified viewpoint. As a preliminary step towards this, we here focus on millipedes. We performed behavioral experiments on a terrain with gap, and found that legs do not tend to move without the ground contact. Based on this qualitative finding, we proposed a decentralized control scheme using local force feedback. Keywords: Millipede
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· Inter-limb coordination · Local force feedback
Introduction
In the animal kingdom, there are animals having various number of legs such as humans, quadrupeds, insects, and myriapods. What is interesting is that they can adapt to changes in the environment as well as changes in their own morphologies, e.g. leg amputation, in real time [1]. This adaptive and resilient locomotion is achieved by coordinating their limbs in a decentralized manner. Clarifying this inter-limb coordination mechanism will help develop legged robots that can move in harsh environments such as disaster areas. Our challenge is to develop a systematic design scheme for legged robots by elucidating the inter-limb coordination mechanism of various legged animals from a unified viewpoint. Towards this goal, we started our research by focusing on individual animal species, particularly on animals with few number of legs, i.e., two, four, and six legged animals [2–4]. However, animals having many legs have been less studied. Accordingly, we here focus on millipedes. In fact, millipedes are suitable model because they have the largest number of legs on earth [5] and can move on unstructured terrain by propagating density waves of the leg tips from the tail to head appropriately [6]. In this study, we first performed behavioral experiments on a terrain with a gap. Then, based on the qualitative findings from c Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 N.F. Lepora et al. (Eds.): Living Machines 2016, LNAI 9793, pp. 449–453, 2016. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-42417-0 45
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Fig. 1. Experiment setup.
Fig. 2. Millipede locomotion on a terrain with a gap.
the experiments, we proposed a simple decentralized control scheme using local force feedback.
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Behavioral Experiments
We performed behavioral experiments using millipedes (Spirosteptus giganteus). To investigate the effect of the ground contact, we observed locomotion on a terrain with a gap (Fig. 1). The result is shown in Fig. 2. On the ground, the leg tips form density waves that propagate forward, as reported in the previous study [6]. However, this behavior changed o
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