Neuromuscular control of reactive behaviors for undulatory robots

Undulatory locomotion is studied as a biological paradigm of versatile body morphology and effective motion control, adaptable to a large variety of unstructured and tortuous environmental conditions. Computational models of undulatory locomotion have been developed, and validated on a series of robotic prototypes propelling themselves on sand. The present paper explores in simulation neuromuscular motion control for these undulatory robot models, based on biomimetic central pattern generators and on information from distributed distance sensors. This leads to reactive control schemes, which achieve (i) traversal of corridor-like environments, and (ii) formation control for swarms of undulatory robots. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.