Bacteria-inspired underactuated mobile robot based on a biological fluctuation

Abstract

Interpretation of the living organism’s ability to utilize noise from engineering point of view may be beneficial for realizing a simple, yet adaptive, robotic system. This paper presents a bacteria-inspired mobile robot, with a 1-DOF motor and a single sensor. Even with such limitations, the underactuated mobile robot is able to navigate toward a gradient-inducing goal in a two-dimensional space by properly utilizing environmental noise that directly affects its motion. The way the robot utilizes this external noise to control its navigation behavior is interpreted based on biological fluctuation: a simple perspective commonly used to describe how living beings utilize internally generated biological noises.