SheetBot: A magic carpet that enables scaffold-based locomotion

Autonomous decentralized control is an attractive concept for designing robots that can exhibit highly adaptive animal-like behaviour. Despite its appeal, previous robots could only adapt to a limited number of environments. To tackle this problem, we hypothesize that robots will move in various environments by simply implementing a “scaffold-exploitation mechanism”. In our previous work, we drew our inspiration from flatworms, which move over various terrains using their two-dimensional sheet-like body, and designed an autonomous decentralized control scheme for a similar robot, SheetBot. In this study, we extend our previous control scheme so that it can effectively exploit the features in its surrounding environment as scaffolds. The validity of the extended control scheme is confirmed by simulations. Our control scheme is not specific to a certain environment but could be applicable in any environment; it thus forms the basis for developing a multi-terrestrial robot whose working area covers land, sea, and even air.