A snake-like robot driven by a decentralized control that enables both phasic and tonic control

Abstract

Autonomous decentralized control is a key concept in our understanding of the mechanism underlying locomotion of animals, wherein the phasic pattern of motion and the excitation pattern of muscle tonus are well reconciled. In our recent work, we proposed a decentralized control scheme in which phasic control and tonic control are well coordinated. In this study, we develop a real snake-like robot to validate our proposed control scheme. Experimental results show that the robot exhibits highly adaptive behavior in response to environmental changes. The results obtained are expected to shed new light on the design of autonomous decentralized control systems.