From Water to Land Unchanged
Can sensory feedback enable an elongate robot to transition from swimming in water to crawling on land without changing its underlying locomotor circuit?
Finished
Overview
This project studies how an elongate, lamprey and eel inspired elongated robot can transition from aquatic to terrestrial locomotion using sensory feedback and body-environment interaction. Rather than designing completely separate controllers for swimming and crawling, the project asks whether the same underlying locomotor circuit can produce different movement modes when coupled to different physical environments.
The broader question is how embodiment and feedback expand the behavioral repertoire of a robotic system. In this setting, water and land provide different mechanical constraints, but proprioceptive and somatosensory feedback can help the robot adapt its movement to each medium.
Methods and Tools
The work used bio-inspired locomotion control, central pattern generator models, sensory feedback integration, physics-based simulation, and experiments with elongate robotic platforms. The study investigated how proprioceptive and somatosensory feedback influence coordination, robustness, and the emergence of terrestrial crawling from swimming-like control.