Abstract
During crawling, a caterpillar body stretches and bends, and a wave repeatedly travels from the tail to the head. Recently, caterpillar locomotion has been modeled using the theory of planar discrete elastic rods (PDER). This work takes a similar modeling approach and introduces feedback control laws with communication between neighboring segments. Caterpillar locomotion is modeled first as a network of spring-mass-dampers connected through nearest neighbor interactions and then as a network of linked torsional springs. Feedback laws are designed to achieve consensus and traveling wave solutions. Simulation results show the displacement of each segment of a caterpillar during locomotion. These results show promise for the design of feedback control laws in a network model of soft robotic systems.
