Emerging behaviours from cyclical, incremental and uniform movements of hyper-redundant and growing robots

Abstract The purpose of this work consists of finding a simple and general method to control hyper-redundant manipulators. By definition, hyper-redundant robots have a large number of degrees of freedom which makes it difficult to find fast and stable solutions. In the case of growing robots, where the number of degrees of freedom can even increase, the problem is exacerbated. This work proposes a new approach. By modifying and reinterpreting the three basic variables needed for operation in a three-dimensional space, our framework gives rise to a number of novel, decentralized control behaviours. These behaviours were not designed but rather emerged as a result of cyclical, incremental and uniform movements in the robot body. They include different modes of attraction, repulsion, surrounding, straightening, folding and circumnutations. As opposed to traditional control approaches which are typically programmed for one specific application, this framework provides a set of general behaviours that can be combined using different motion strategies for a wide number of applications. We demonstrate the usefulness of this approach in a number of scenarios for hyper-redundant and growing robots.