A distributed control scheme for motor networks with communication-constrained channels

In biological systems a central pattern generator is thought to generate motion patterns for muscular movement that exhibits strong nonlinearity. After learning process, motion is then executed with minimal interaction of the cerebellum, hence freeing up communication channels. Inspired by the biological pattern generator, this paper proposes a scheme to control motor networks with slow communication channels. In the proposed control scheme, motion patterns consist of simple torque pulses. Each joint autonomously generates input torque patterns and the patterns are refined through a searching process. After the searching process, motors can be controlled in an open loop fashion, with minimal management by a central processor. The feasibility of the proposed scheme is demonstrated by a robotic finger system with communication-constrained channels