CPG-based control of a swallowing robot

Abstract

CPGs are non-linear oscillators formed by neural circuits which can generate rhythmic movements without receiving central input or rhythmic sensory feedback. They are the essential mechanism under animal rhythmic locomotion. In this paper, a biological inspired CPG controller was adopted to control a swallowing robot based on a recurrent cyclic inhibition (RCI) circuit. In this design, the RCI consist of three neurons generate rhythmic movement. There are two kinds of working method under this control system in order to mimic human swallowing process: one is to modelling the behaviour the primary peristalsis, and the other is to imitating the secondary peristalsis.