Distributed Central Pattern Generator Control for a Serpentine Robot

摘要

Abstract We have built a biologically and neurally inspired autonomous mobile robotic worm. The main aim of the project is to demonstrate elegant motion on a robot with a large number of degrees of freedom (DOFs) under the control of a simple distributed neural system as found in many animals ’ spinal cord. Our robot consists of individually controlled segments that exhibit Central-Pattern-Generator (CPG)-driven biomorphic motion. An important aspect of the project is to achieve a level of modularity while closely mimicking the neural control of e.g., the lamprey. This paper presents our robotic platform and the distributed CPG control algorithms. We will mainly focus on the architecture of the initial system and on future developments, and also report some preliminary experimental results.