The sensorimotor loop as a dynamical system: How regular motion primitives may emerge from self-organized limit cycles
This work addresses the problem of understanding emergent motion in robotics for researchers in dynamical systems and embodied AI, but it is incremental as it builds on existing theories with specific simulations.
The study investigated how simple robots with a cylindrical body and a single proprioceptual neuron can self-organize into stable limit cycles, resulting in periodic motions like rolling and back-and-forth movements, with stability terminating at fold bifurcations and multiple motion branches existing for the same parameters.
We investigate the sensorimotor loop of simple robots simulated within the LPZRobots environment from the point of view of dynamical systems theory. For a robot with a cylindrical shaped body and an actuator controlled by a single proprioceptual neuron we find various types of periodic motions in terms of stable limit cycles. These are self-organized in the sense, that the dynamics of the actuator kicks in only, for a certain range of parameters, when the barrel is already rolling, stopping otherwise. The stability of the resulting rolling motions terminates generally, as a function of the control parameters, at points where fold bifurcations of limit cycles occur. We find that several branches of motion types exist for the same parameters, in terms of the relative frequencies of the barrel and of the actuator, having each their respective basins of attractions in terms of initial conditions. For low drivings stable limit cycles describing periodic and drifting back-and-forth motions are found additionally. These modes allow to generate symmetry breaking explorative behavior purely by the timing of an otherwise neutral signal with respect to the cyclic back-and-forth motion of the robot.