Toward realization of resilient behavior inspired by ophiuroid locomotion

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24246074
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Control engineering
• Research Institution: Tohoku University
• Principal Investigator: Ishiguro Akio 東北大学, 電気通信研究所, 教授 (90232280)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): AONUMA HITOSHI 北海道大学, 電子科学研究所, 准教授 (20333643) ; MATSUZAKA YOSHIYA 東北大学, 医学系研究科, 講師 (30312557)
• Co-Investigator(Renkei-kenkyūsha): KANO TAKESHI 東北大学, 電気通信研究所, 助教 (80513069) ; SAKAMOTO KAZUHIRO 東北大学, 電気通信研究所, 助教 (80261569)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 自律分散制御 / クモヒトデ / 肢間協調 / 肢内協調 / 振る舞いの多様性

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Most robots are vulnerable to changes in environment and their own morphology such as failures. To overcome this problem, we drew inspiration from an ophiuroid, which is a primitive living organism. An ophiuroid, which consists of a central disc and five functionally interchangeable arms that diverge radially from the central disc, can move away from predators or harmful stimuli by autotomizing its arms. Very interestingly, an ophiuroid can maintain locomotion after losing its arms arbitrarily.
In this study, we modeled the control principle underlying this resilient behavior. We showed that a simple decentralized control scheme could well reproduce that behavior by performing numerical simulations as well as experiments with real physical ophiuroid-like robots.

Free Research Field

システム工学，ロボット工学，数理生物学