Inter-limb Coordination Mechanism Based on the Coupling Between Hydraulic and Muscle Actuations in Wandering Spiders

Abstract

Soft-bodied legged robot shows high adaptability to the environment by utilizing its flexible body mechanics. However, it is difficult to generate adaptive coordination patterns between limbs (i.e., interlimb coordination), and decentralized control could be a solution for this problem. To develop such control mechanism, we focused on wandering spiders that exploit well-balanced coupling between hydraulic and muscle actuations and aimed to construct the decentralized control mechanism that can reproduce inter-limb coordination. For this purpose, we employed a synthetic approach wherein we construct a simple mathematical model based on biological insights. As a first step, here we built a two-dimensional robot model with two legs and proposed a simple local reflexive mechanism based on the interaction between leg flexor and body fluid.