Physics-driven locomotion planning method for a planar closed-loop terrain-adaptive robot

Shape-changing robots show great potential in locomotion on complex terrains for their capability of reshaping to fit the rough surfaces and to move omnidirectionally. In previous studies, many kinds of shape-changing robots have been proposed, and manual discrete locomotion planning method was adopted in most cases. However, autonomy is highly demanded in field working, especially when the robot is confronted with varied circumstances. In this work, we focus on autonomous locomotion planning for the planar closed-loop robot. Physics-driven locomotion planning method is proposed based on modelling an artificial dynamical process, which is intended to generate feasible configurations subject to the local terrain. To verify our methodology, we developed a polygonal robot prototype and conducted both dynamic simulations and laboratory experiments. The results show that the proposed method is capable of generating feasible locomotion control scheme for various working conditions, such as curve terrain, obstacle and step terrain.