Although significant progress has been made in the development of robots with serpentine properties, the issues of motion control and adaptation to environmental constraints still require substantial research. This is particularly true for search and rescue applications, where reliable operation in extremely difficult terrain is essential. This paper presents a novel robot design based on the mechanics and neural control of locomotion in Caenorhabditis elegans, a tiny nematode worm. Equipped with an extremely simple yet powerful neurally-inspired decentralized control system, the robot presented here is capable of effective serpentine locomotion. More importantly, it exhibits sensorless path finding, in which obstacles in the environment are overcome, based purely on proprioceptive feedback encoding body shape. Indeed, the robot lacks any form of external sensory capability. The design and implementation of the prototype robot and its control strategy are discussed. In order to validate the control strategy for path finding, experiments and analyses have been performed. The results show that the robot can find its path successfully in the majority of cases. The current limitations have also been discussed. © 2012 IEEE.@en

The 1mm long nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) is one of the best characterized animals and an important biological model for studies of nervous system function and behavior. C. elegans locomotion is generated by the rhythmic contraction of muscles under the control and regulation of the animal's nervous system. The final goal of this research is to build a robotic model mimicking this undulatory locomotion. Towards this end, a first prototype invertebrate wormbot using electroactive polymer is presented in this paper. The 25mm wormbot is made of a single ionic polymer-metal composite consisting of five segments that are controlled individually and can propagate a sinusoidal wave along the robot body similar to the movement of C. elegans. Solutions to the technical challenges of miniaturization, IPMC segmentation and small scale electrical wiring are also described. Finally, a digital image processing technique was developed for online sensory feedback. The system operates in real time and includes robust image noise removal.@en