Transactions of the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers
Online ISSN : 1883-8189
Print ISSN : 0453-4654
ISSN-L : 0453-4654
Paper
Experimental Verification of Fully Decentralized Control Inspired by Plasmodium of True Slime Mold
Takuya UMEDACHIKoichi TAKEDAToshiyuki NAKAGAKIRyo KOBAYASHIAkio ISHIGURO
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2010 Volume 46 Issue 11 Pages 706-712

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Abstract

This paper presents a fully decentralized control inspired by plasmodium of true slime mold and its validity using a soft-bodied amoeboid robot. The notable features of this paper are twofold: (1) the robot has truly soft and deformable body stemming from real-time tunable springs and a balloon, the former is utilized as an outer skin of the body and the latter serves as protoplasm; and (2) a fully decentralized control using coupled oscillators with completely local sensory feedback mechanism is realized by exploiting the long-distance physical interaction between the body parts induced by the law of conservation of protoplasmic mass. Experimental results show that this robot exhibits truly supple locomotion without relying on any hierarchical structure. The results obtained are expected to shed new light on design scheme for autonomous decentralized control system.

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© 2010 The Society of Instrument and Control Engineers
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