Natural Gaits for Multilink Mechanical Systems

Typical animal locomotion is achieved by the rhythmical undulation of its body segments while interacting with its environment. It inspires the mechanical design of multilink locomotors. With different postures, a multilink system may present different locomotion gaits. Recently, a so-called natural oscillation gait was studied for multilink systems, and a class of biologically inspired controllers was designed for the achievement of the gait. In this paper, the theoretical design is experimentally applied on a mechanical multilink testbed of two posture configurations in rayfish-like flapping-wing motion and snake-like serpentine motion. The effectiveness of the design is cross examined by theoretical analysis, numerical simulation, and experiments.