Meeting Abstract
There is a growing need in the development of locomotion techniques for miniature mobile robots for a wide range of applications that involve navigating through difficult scenarios, unknown terrains, and dangerous areas of interest. The efficient movements that arthropods exhibit have evolved over 500 million years, demonstrating effective kinematics and dynamics with respect to the surrounding environments. Diplopoda (millipedes), like other myriapods, have elongated bodies with numerous pairs of legs, which allow them to perform more adept maneuvers compared to other arthropods, such as cockroaches and beetles that have served as inspiration for many existing miniature ambulatory robots. Several interesting and relevant features specific to millipedes with respect to robotic applications include: (i) stable locomotion, (ii) ability to burrow through different substrates, and (iii) flexibility to traverse complex uneven terrains and right themselves swiftly when fallen over. These actions are performed by utilizing its myriapod morphology in combination with a unique traveling wave gait. An investigation of the locomotion biomechanics observed in millipedes is performed in order to provide a model that can be used to design a crawling miniature millipede-inspired robot (millibot). This study focuses on analyzing the dynamics of the effective traveling wave gait used in millipede locomotion, with interest in gait adjustments through wave modulations, implemented for different cases requiring more power such as burrowing and climbing. The ability to characterize its gait with the traveling wave properties of the aggregate behavior across all its legs, such as the wavelength, amplitude and velocity, would be desirable in developing a central robotic control scheme for a miniature platform.
