Conventional mobile robots have difficulties adapting to unpredictable environments or performing adequately after undergoing physical damages in realtime operation, unlike animals. We address this issue by focusing on brittle stars, an echinoderm related to starfish. Most brittle stars have five flexible arms, and they can coordinate among the arms (i.e., inter-arm coordination) as well as the many bodily degrees of freedom within each arm (i.e., intra-arm coordination). They can move in unpredictable environments while promptly adapting to those, and to their own physical damages (e.g., arm amputation). Our previous work focused on the inter-arm coordination by studying trimmed-arm brittle stars. Herein, we extend our previous work and propose a decentralized control mechanism that enables coupling between the inter-arm and intra-arm coordination. We demonstrate via simulations and real-world experiments with a brittle star-like robot that the behavior of brittle stars when they are intact and undergoing shortening or amputation of arms can be replicated.

中文翻译：

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柔性肢体的柔性协调：脆性星的运动中肢体间和肢体内部协调的分散控制方案。

与动物不同，传统的移动机器人难以适应不可预测的环境或在实时操作中遭受物理损坏后难以充分发挥性能。我们通过关注脆性恒星（与海星有关的棘皮动物）来解决这个问题。大多数脆性星具有五个柔性臂，并且它们可以在各个臂之间进行协调（即，臂间协调）以及每个臂内的许多身体自由度（即，臂内协调）。他们可以在无法预测的环境中移动，同时迅速适应这些环境以及自身的身体伤害（例如，截肢）。我们以前的工作主要是通过研究修剪臂的脆性恒星来进行臂间协调。在这里 我们扩展了以前的工作，并提出了一种分散控制机制，该机制可以实现臂间协调和臂内协调之间的耦合。我们通过使用脆性星状机器人进行的仿真和实际实验证明，可以复制脆性星完整无缺并经受臂的缩短或截肢时的行为。