Abstract
Most robots are vulnerable to changes in their own morphology such as failures. To tackle this problem, we have focused on ophiuroids, which have simple body with pentaradial symmetry, as our model. Although they are composed of primitive decentralized nervous system, they can coordinate their arm movements adequately even when the arms are arbitrarily cut off. In this study, we aimed to clarify the fundamental mechanism underlying this resilient ophiuroid locomotion. For this purpose, we performed behavioral experiment using ohiuroids with different number of shortened arms, and proposed a simple autonomous decentralized control scheme on this basis. The validity of the propose control scheme was confirmed via simulation.
