Dynamical Wall Following for a Wheeled Robot Using a Passive Tactile Sensor

Feedback from antennae - long, flexible tactile sensors - enables cockroaches and other arthropods to rapidly maneuver through poorly lit and cluttered environments. Inspired by their performance, we created a wall-following controller for a dynamic wheeled robot using tactile antenna feedback. We show this controller is stable for a wide range of control gains and robot system parameters. To test the controller, we constructed a two-link antenna that uses potentiometers and capacitive contact sensors. Experiments based on the prototype demonstrate that our controller robustly tracks unexpected corners ranging from -60° to +900.