Autonomous central pattern generator equation generation for coordinated modular robot locomotion

Modular robots hold the promise of being a flexible solution to many issues within science. Their adaptability within hardware and software can provide the right robot for each and every situation. Presented here is a toolkit for automatically generating the central pattern generator equations which provide coordinated whole-body locomotion for modular robots. Robot shapes created in XML are read and parsed to determine specific sub-structures which adhere to common and known locomotion patterns for the specific modular robot currently utilized. Locomotion is based upon coordinated whole-body motion which is necessary for low-powered modular robots, such as the Linkbot used here, to create locomotion. By parsing the structure, the number of free control parameters is drastically reduced to aid in efficient simulation. A simulation-based genetic algorithm process is used to generate motions and optimize the parameters of motion. The reduction in control parameters for large structures is an order of magnitude from the theoretical maximum. From simulated results of various shapes constructed out of the modules, parsing increases the robot's linear speed when compared to optimizing all variables of the CPG network.