Stabilization of periodic sweeping processes and asymptotic average velocity for soft locomotors with dry friction

Abstract

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>We study the asymptotic stability of periodic solutions for sweeping processes defined by a polyhedron with translationally moving faces. Previous results are improved by obtaining a stronger <inline-formula><tex-math id="M1">\begin{document}$ W^{1,2} $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> convergence. Then we present an application to a model of crawling locomotion. Our stronger convergence allows us to prove the stabilization of the system to a running-periodic (or derivo-periodic, or relative-periodic) solution and the well-posedness of an average asymptotic velocity depending only on the gait adopted by the crawler. Finally, we discuss some examples of finite-time versus asymptotic-only convergence.</p>