Sprawling Quadruped Robot Driven by Decentralized Control With Cross-Coupled Sensory Feedback Between Legs and Trunk

Quadruped animals achieve agile and highly adaptive locomotion owing to the coordination between their legs and other body parts, such as the trunk, head, and tail, that is, body-limb coordination. This study aims to understand the sensorimotor control underlying body-limb coordination. To this end, we adopted sprawling locomotion in vertebrate animals as a model behavior. This is a quadruped walking gait with lateral body bending used by many amphibians and lizards. Our previous simulation study demonstrated that cross-coupled sensory feedback between the legs and trunk helps to rapidly establish body-limb coordination and improve locomotion performance. This paper presented an experimental validation of the cross-coupled sensory feedback control using a newly developed quadruped robot. The results show similar tendencies to the simulation study. Sensory feedback provides rapid convergence to stable gait, robustness against leg failure, and morphological changes. Our study suggests that sensory feedback potentially plays an essential role in body-limb coordination and provides a robust, sensory-driven control principle for quadruped robots.