Fluid-filled Soft-bodied Amoeboid Robot Inspired by Plasmodium of True Slime Mold

Umedachi Takuya

Idei Ryo

Nakagaki Toshiyuki

Kobayashi Ryo

Ishiguro Akio

Advanced Robotics

This paper presents a fluid-filled soft-bodied amoeboid robot inspired by plasmodium of true slime mold. The significant features of this robot are twofold: (1) the robot has fluid circuit (i.e., cylinders and nylon tubes filled with fluid) and truly soft and deformable body stemming from Real-time Tunable Springs (RTSs), the former seals protoplasm to induce global physical interaction between the body parts and the latter is used for elastic actuators; and (2) a fully decentralized control using coupled oscillators with completely local sensory feedback mechanism is realized by exploiting the global physical interaction between the body parts stemming from the fluid circuit. The experimental results show that this robot exhibits adaptive locomotion without relying on any hierarchical structure. The results obtained are expected to shed new light on design scheme for autonomous decentralized control systems.

Biologically inspired robot

fluid circuit

decentralized control

sensory-motor coordination

modular robot

Architecture. Building [ 520 ]

eng

Taylor & Francis Ltd

(c) 2012. Taylor & Francis Ltd. All rights reserved.

[ISSN] 0169-1864

[DOI] 10.1163/156855312X626316

[NCID] AA10679021

[DOI] http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156855312X626316