Robust undulatory locomotion through neuromechanical adjustments in a dissipative medium

Dissipative environments are ubiquitous in nature, from microscopic swimmers in low-Reynolds-number fluids to macroscopic animals in frictional media. In this study, we consider a mathematical model of a slender elastic locomotor with an internal rhythmic neural pattern generator to examine various undulatory locomotion such as Caenorhabditis elegans swimming and crawling behaviours. By using local mechanical load as mechanosensory feedback, we have found that undulatory locomotion robustly emerges in different rheological media. This progressive behaviour is then characterized as a global attractor through dynamical systems analysis with a Poincaré section. Furthermore, by controlling the mechanosensation, we were able to design the dynamical systems to manoeuvre with progressive, reverse and turning motions as well as apparently random, complex behaviours, reminiscent of those experimentally observed in C. elegans. The mechanisms found in this study, together with our dynamical systems methodology, are useful for deciphering complex animal adaptive behaviours and designing robots capable of locomotion in a wide range of dissipative environments.