Motion Pattern Generation of Peristaltic Type Robot by Numerical Optimization

- Comparison between numerical simulations and experiments-

Abstract

In this research, we focus on a peristaltic motion that is locomotive pattern of earthworms. Inspired from the peristaltic motion, mobile robots moving in narrow space is able to be constructed. To realize effective motion of the peristaltic mobile robot, motion patterns are generated based on the dynamical model and the particle swarm optimization algorithm, one of the meta-heuristic optimization. The optimized results are investigated by comparing to simple periodic patterns through numerical simulations and experiments.