Central Pattern Generators Control of Momentum Driven Compliant Structures

We introduce the concept of Momentum Driven Structures (MDS) made of inertially actuated units linked together by compliant elements as a potential solution for rough environments exploration. We propose a control method for MDS based on the bio-inspired concept of Central Pattern Generator (CPG) and study in simulation the impact of compliance distribution on locomotion performance using population based optimization techniques. Our results suggest that compliant structures outperform their rigid counterparts in terms of distance traveled. In addition, we show that co-evolved structures perform only marginally better than their control-only optimized equivalent, highlighting the fact that compliance modulation may not be a significant asset in such experiments, considering the related hardware complexity it introduces.