PMID- 17036811
OWN - NLM
STAT- MEDLINE
DCOM- 20061120
LR  - 20191210
IS  - 1083-4419 (Print)
IS  - 1083-4419 (Linking)
VI  - 36
IP  - 5
DP  - 2006 Oct
TI  - Design and control of an IPMC wormlike robot.
PG  - 1044-52
AB  - This paper presents an innovative wormlike robot controlled by cellular neural 
      networks (CNNs) and made of an ionic polymer-metal composite (IPMC) self-actuated 
      skeleton. The IPMC actuators, from which it is made of, are new materials that 
      behave similarly to biological muscles. The idea that inspired the work is the 
      possibility of using IPMCs to design autonomous moving structures. CNNs have 
      already demonstrated their powerfulness as new structures for bio-inspired 
      locomotion generation and control. The control scheme for the proposed IPMC 
      moving structure is based on CNNs. The wormlike robot is totally made of IPMCs, 
      and each actuator has to carry its own weight. All the actuators are connected 
      together without using any other additional part, thereby constituting the robot 
      structure itself. Worm locomotion is performed by bending the actuators 
      sequentially from "tail" to "head," imitating the traveling wave observed in 
      real-world undulatory locomotion. The activation signals are generated by a CNN. 
      In the authors' opinion, the proposed strategy represents a promising solution in 
      the field of autonomous and light structures that are capable of reconfiguring 
      and moving in line with spatial-temporal dynamics generated by CNNs.
FAU - Arena, Paolo
AU  - Arena P
AD  - Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettrica Elettronica e dei Sistemi, Facolta, di 
      Ingegneria, Universita Degli Studi di Catania, 95125 Catania, Italy.
FAU - Bonomo, Claudia
AU  - Bonomo C
FAU - Fortuna, Luigi
AU  - Fortuna L
FAU - Frasca, Mattia
AU  - Frasca M
FAU - Graziani, Salvatore
AU  - Graziani S
LA  - eng
PT  - Evaluation Study
PT  - Journal Article
PT  - Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
PL  - United States
TA  - IEEE Trans Syst Man Cybern B Cybern
JT  - IEEE transactions on systems, man, and cybernetics. Part B, Cybernetics : a 
      publication of the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society
JID - 9890044
SB  - IM
MH  - Animals
MH  - Annelida/*physiology
MH  - Biomimetics/*instrumentation/methods
MH  - Computer-Aided Design
MH  - Equipment Design
MH  - Equipment Failure Analysis
MH  - Locomotion/*physiology
MH  - Muscle Contraction/*physiology
MH  - Muscle, Skeletal/*physiology
MH  - *Neural Networks, Computer
EDAT- 2006/10/14 09:00
MHDA- 2006/12/09 09:00
CRDT- 2006/10/14 09:00
PHST- 2006/10/14 09:00 [pubmed]
PHST- 2006/12/09 09:00 [medline]
PHST- 2006/10/14 09:00 [entrez]
AID - 10.1109/tsmcb.2006.873188 [doi]
PST - ppublish
SO  - IEEE Trans Syst Man Cybern B Cybern. 2006 Oct;36(5):1044-52. doi: 
      10.1109/tsmcb.2006.873188.