A dung beetle-inspired robotic model and its distributed sensor-driven control for walking and ball rolling

Abstract

A typical approach when designing a bio-inspired robot is to simplify an animal model and to enhance the functionality of interest. For hexapod robots, this often leads to a need of supplementary mechanics to become multifunctional. However, a preferable solution is to employ the embodied multifunctional capabilities of the animal as inspiration for robot design. Using this approach, we present a method for translating the kinematic chain of a dung beetle from which an accurate kinematic model and a simplified one were simulated and compared. The beetle was selected due to its multifunctional locomotory capabilities including walking as well as standing on and rolling a ball. For testing the models, we developed a distributed sensor-driven controller that can generate walking and ball-rolling behaviors. A comparison of the two modeling approaches shows a similar performance with regards to walking stability and accuracy, but differences when it comes to speed and multifunctionality. This is because the accurate model is able to use its legs to walk faster and roll a ball, which the simplified one is not. In conclusion, the accurate model of a dung beetle-inspired robot is advantageous as it, together with our novel control mechanism, is able to elicit behaviors comparable to those of the real dung beetle (i.e., walking and rolling a dung ball).