An adaptive, self-organizing dynamical system for hierarchical control of bio-inspired locomotion

In this paper, dynamical systems made up of locally coupled nonlinear units are used to control the locomotion of bio-inspired robots and, in particular, a simulation of an insect-like hexapod robot. These controllers are inspired by the biological paradigm of central pattern generators and are responsible for generating a locomotion gait. A general structure, which is able to change the locomotion gait according to environmental conditions, is introduced. This structure is based on an adaptive system, implemented by motor maps, and is able to learn the correct locomotion gait on the basis of a reward function. The proposed control system is validated by a large number of simulations carried out in a dynamic environment for simulating legged robots.