@Article{kamimura:tm:2005,
  author    = {Kamimura, Akiya and Kurokawa, Haruhisa and Yoshida, Eiichi and Murata, Satoshi and Tomita, Kohji and Kokaji, Shigeru},
  title     = {Automatic Locomotion Design and Experiments for a Modular Robotic System},
  journal   = {IEEE-ASME Transactions on Mechatronics},
  year      = {2005},
  volume    = {10},
  number    = {3},
  pages     = {314--325},
  month     = {June},
  doi       = {10.1109/TMECH.2005.848299},
  url       = {https://staff.aist.go.jp/e.yoshida/papers/TransMech05.pdf},
  keywords  = {Central pattern generator (CPG), evolutionary computation, locomotion, modular robot, neural oscillator network.},
  abstract  = {This paper presents a design method and experiments for whole-body locomotion by a modular robot. There are two types of locomotion for modular robots: a repeating self-reconfiguration and whole-body motion such as walking or crawling. For whole-body locomotion, designing a control method is more difficult than for ordinary robots because a modular robotic system can form various configurations, each of which has many degrees of freedom. This study proposes a unified framework for automatically designing an efficient locomotion controller suitable for any module configuration. The method utilizes neural oscillators (central pattern generators, CPGs), each of which works as a distributed joint controller of each module, and a genetic algorithm to optimize the CPG network. We verified the method by software simulations and hardware experiments, in which our modular robotic system, named M-TRAN II, performed stable and effective locomotion in various configurations.},
  publisher = {IEEE-INST Electrical Electronics Engineers Inc},
  address   = {445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08855-4141, USA}
}