"No-CPU" chaotic robots: From classroom to commerce

Abstract

For more than a decade, chaotic signals have been adopted to generate gaits for robots via simple and effective chaotic circuits within or without CPUs. The signals are used to guide a robot to navigate chaotically. This type of robots is useful in many applications ranging from engineering education such as high school science projects to military de-mining tasks alike. Computer simulations using various choices of chaotic patterns reveal that the pattern of chaotic orbit generated by Chua's circuit is the best in the sense of wide area coverage, high availability of design documentation and easy circuit construction. Experimental results show that the chaotic robots described in this article are very promising for transforming several tasks in such devices as vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers, de-mining vehicles, and so on. This cost-effective utilization can be simply done by embedding the chaotic circuits into the target applications without CPUs. © 2006 IEEE.