Curved path following control for planar eel robots

The dynamic models of the eel robots are under-actuated, highly nonlinear and coupled. It is thus a challenging work to design the path following controller for the eel robots. This paper proposes a framework of general curved path following control for planar eel robots. An implicit equation is used for describing the general 2D curved path. For simplicity, the eel robots are assumed to have smaller lateral displacement compared to the forward motion. A modified feedback control law based on the kinematic approximation model is combined with the gait controller to realize the curved path following of the eel robots. The eel robots with different gait patterns starting from an arbitrary initial position can guarantee asymptotic convergence to any given position. The simulation results show its effectiveness to apply the path following controller to the eel robot.