A Sensory Feedback Control Law for Octopus Arm Movements

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel sensory feedback control law for octopus arms, enabling life-like, stable movements that align with biological observations, advancing understanding of soft robotic limb control.

Contribution

It presents a new sensory feedback control law inspired by biological observations, with analytical stability analysis and simulation results demonstrating realistic octopus arm motion.

Findings

Stable equilibrium characterized and analyzed.

Simulations match biological motion patterns.

Provides explanation for canonical octopus arm movements.

Abstract

The main contribution of this paper is a novel sensory feedback control law for an octopus arm. The control law is inspired by, and helps integrate, several observations made by biologists. The proposed control law is distinct from prior work which has mainly focused on open-loop control strategies. Several analytical results are described including characterization of the equilibrium and its stability analysis. Numerical simulations demonstrate life-like motion of the soft octopus arm, qualitatively matching behavioral experiments. Quantitative comparison with bend propagation experiments helps provide the first explanation of such canonical motion using a sensory feedback control law. Several remarks are included that help draw parallels with natural pursuit strategies such as motion camouflage or classical pursuit.