Manipulating Ergodic Bodies through Gentle Guidance

This paper proposes methods for achieving basic tasks such as navigation, patrolling, herding, and coverage by exploiting the wild motions of very simple bodies in the environment. Bodies move within regions that are connected by gates that enforce specific rules of passage. Common issues such as dynamical system modeling, precise state estimation, and state feedback are avoided. The method is demonstrated in a series of experiments that manipulate the flow of weasel balls (without the weasels) and Hexbug Nano vibrating bugs.

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