Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : June 08, 2016 - June 11, 2016
Autonomous decentralized control could be the key to design adaptive multi-legged robots that can function in unpredictable and unstructured environments. To address this issue, we focus on centipedes with a large number of legs and aim to understand the ingenious decentralized control mechanism underlying their highly adaptive locomotion. For this purpose, we employed an approach to construct a simple mathematical model on the basis of behavioral experiments. We then found that the ground reaction force plays a significant role in generating rhythmic leg movement, and that the motion of each leg is likely affected by sensory input from its neighboring legs. On this basis, we proposed a two-dimensional model wherein a simple local reflexive mechanism was implemented. As a result, our simulated centipede robot could move adaptively in response to the changes in the environment, like real centipedes.
