Self-propulsion via slipping: Frictional swimming in multilegged locomotors

Locomotion is typically studied either in continuous media where bodies and legs experience forces generated by the flowing medium or on solid substrates dominated by friction. In the former, centralized whole-body coordination is believed to facilitate appropriate slipping through the medium for propulsion. In the latter, slip is often assumed minimal and thus avoided via decentralized control schemes. We find in laboratory experiments that terrestrial locomotion of a meter-scale multisegmented/legged robophysical model resembles undulatory fluid swimming. Experiments varying waves of leg stepping and body bending reveal how these parameters result in effective terrestrial locomotion despite seemingly ineffective isotropic frictional contacts. Dissipation dominates over inertial effects in this macroscopic-scaled regime, resulting in essentially geometric locomotion on land akin to microscopic-scale swimming in fluids. Theoretical analysis demonstrates that the high-dimensional multisegmented/legged dynamics can be simplified to a centralized low-dimensional model, which reveals an effective resistive force theory with an acquired viscous drag anisotropy. We extend our low-dimensional, geometric analysis to illustrate how body undulation can aid performance in non–flat obstacle-rich terrains and also use the scheme to quantitatively model how body undulation affects performance of biological centipede locomotion (the desert centipede Scolopendra polymorpha) moving at relatively high speeds (∼0.5 body lengths/sec). Our results could facilitate control of multilegged robots in complex terradynamic scenarios.