IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS, PREPRINT 1 Templates and Anchors for Antenna-Based Wall Following in Cockroaches and Robots

Abstract—The interplay between robotics and neuromechanics facilitates discoveries in both fields: nature provides roboticists with design ideas, while robotics research elucidates critical fea-tures that confer performance advantages to biological systems. Here we explore a system particularly well suited to exploit the synergies between biology and robotics: high-speed antenna-based wall following of the American cockroach (Periplaneta americana). Our approach integrates mathematical and hardware modeling with behavioral and neurophysiological experiments. Specifically, we corroborate a prediction from a previously re-ported wall-following template—the simplest model that captures a behavior—that a cockroach antenna-based controller requires rate of approach to a wall in addition to distance, e.g. in the form of a proportional-derivative (PD) controller. Neurophysiological experiments reveal that important features of the wall-following controller emerge at the earliest stages of sensory processing, namely in the antennal nerve. Furthermore, we embed the template in a robotic platform outfitted with a bio-inspired antenna. Using this system, we successfully test specific PD gains (up to a scale) fitted to the cockroach behavioral data in a “real-world ” setting, lending further credence to the surprisingly simple notion that a cockroach might implement a PD controller for wall following. Finally, we embed the template in a simulated lateral-leg-spring (LLS) model using the center of pressure as the control input. Importantly, the same PD gains fitted to cockroach behavior also stabilize wall following for the LLS model. Index Terms—Biological system modeling, templates and an-chors, unicycle, lateral leg spring, legged locomotion, insect antenna, bio-inspiration, biomimicry, wall following I