A Simulation Environment for Undulatory Locomotion

This paper presents a block-based simulation environment, developed on top of Matlab/SimulinkTM to facilitate research into various aspects of undulatory robotic locomotion in biology and robotics, including assessing the effect of different body configurations on gait generation. Simulations of snake-like mechanisms are made in this environment by connecting customisable body segment blocks via appropriate joint blocks, which are activated (either by explicit joint control blocks, or by neuromusclular control blocks) to propagate a travelling wave along the mechanism. Several force models are used to characterise the interaction with the locomotion environment, and emulate crawling, walking and swimming. Simulations of anguilliform swimming are presented to illustrate the versatility of the developed tools, and the potential of their use in a variety of domains, from robotics to computational neuroethology.