A novel mechanism for caterpillar-like locomotion using asymmetric oscillation

Author(s): Guoyuan Li, Houxiang Zhang, Fernando Herrero-Carron, Hans Petter Hildre and Jianwei Zhang

in: IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM), 2011

Abstract

This paper presents a novel mechanism to implement caterpillar-like locomotion. First, the caterpillar-like locomotive pattern in nature is investigated and analyzed systematically. From a biological point of view, caterpillar locomotion can be abstracted as a body wave, called half wave. It is simple, but efficient. In this paper, a novel control mechanism, maintaining the half wave property, is integrated into an improved central pattern generator (CPG) model. For the first time, an asymmetric oscillation is employed on the model for gait generation. The movement is proved stable according to a kinematic analysis. Modulation is able to use to change the shape of the half wave during locomotion. A series of simulation shows the feasibility of using asymmetric oscillators for locomotion. Furthermore, the latest results obtained demonstrate that the proposed asymmetric locomotion mechanism is easy to implement while offering a satisfactory motion performance in on-site experiments.

BibTeX


@INPROCEEDINGS{6027047, 
author={Guoyuan Li and Houxiang Zhang and Herrero-Carron, F. and Hildre, H.P. and Jianwei Zhang}, 
booktitle={Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM), 2011 IEEE/ASME International Conference on}, 
title={A novel mechanism for caterpillar-like locomotion using asymmetric oscillation}, 
year={2011}, 
month={july}, 
volume={}, 
number={}, 
pages={164 -169}, 
keywords={asymmetric oscillation;caterpillar-like locomotion;central pattern generator model;gait generation;half wave property;}, 
doi={10.1109/AIM.2011.6027047}, 
ISSN={2159-6247},}