Moving a robot arm by exploiting its complex compliant morphology

Abstract

The vision of morphological computation proposes that the complexity of compliant bodies of biological systems is not accidentally, but rather that it can contribute to the computations, which are needed for a successful interaction with the environment. We demonstrate in a simulation that a compliant, highly nonlinear body (simulated as a random network of masses and springs) can serve as a computational resource, which allows the end-effector of a two-link robot arm to move autonomously on a complex trajectory. Remarkably, simple linear and static feedback loops from the state of the compliant structure back to the robot arm torques suffice. This suggests that by outsourcing parts of the nonlinear and dynamic computation to the compliant morphology the remaining computational task is much simpler and can be even represented by some static, linear weights.