The bio-inspired chaotic robot

Abstract

Chaos is an interesting phenomenon displayed by non-linear systems that has been used in robotics and found empirically on real robots' behaviour. This paper presents a formal proof that Braitenberg vehicle 2b, a bio-inspired control mechanism for unicycle robots, behaves as a mass in a potential well. This provides a powerful analogy to understand Braitenberg vehicle 2b as a mechanical system and it implies that its behaviour can be chaotic. Implementing a Braitenberg vehicle in robotics entails defining a stimulus function in the environment. Inspired by previous works and using the obtained theoretical results, this paper proposes the free area perceived by a robot as a stimulus to generate collision free continuous chaotic motion on a bounded space. In non-linear systems chaos appears when a parameter is changed in a family of dynamical systems. Similarly, our implementation on a real robot demonstrates that both, chaotic and non chaotic trajectories can be obtained depending on the stimulus function built. The behaviour is explained through the analogy with the mass in the potential well.