To Coordinate or Not to Coordinate? Learning to Swim with Eight Soft Arms
To Coordinate or Not to Coordinate? Learning to Swim with Eight Soft Arms
This research investigates whether explicit coordination between multiple soft arms is necessary for effective swimming.
The study presents a reinforcement learning approach to controlling an eight-arm soft swimmer, comparing three control strategies where the uncoupled amplitude modulation strategy achieved successful tracking in 169 out of 200 episodes.
Source: arXiv Robotics — research abstracts · Read original article ↗
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Publisher-reported claims, with original evidence. These results have not been independently verified by RoboSignal.
Reported numbers
episodes
200 episodes
Reported trials
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orcement learning-based control strategies using proximal policy optimization (PPO): (1) learning arm-specific actuation amplitudes without inter-arm phase coupling, (2) learning actuation amplitudes with prescribed inter-arm phase coupling, and (3) directly learning actuator commands through end-to-end PPO without an explicit rhythmic structure. Across 200 episodes with randomized three-dimensional velocity commands
Open source S3episodes
169 episodes
Reported trials
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, the controller without phase coupling satisfies the tracking criterion in 169 episodes, compared with 117 for the phase-coupled controller and 28 for end-to-end PPO. Straight-line swimming and commanded direction-change trials further demonstrate more accurate velocity tracking without phase coupling. These findings suggest that effective eight-arm swimming does not require prescribed inter-arm phase coupling, but
Open source S4episodes
117
Reported trials
View original evidence
, the controller without phase coupling satisfies the tracking criterion in 169 episodes, compared with 117 for the phase-coupled controller and 28 for end-to-end PPO. Straight-line swimming and commanded direction-change trials further demonstrate more accurate velocity tracking without phase coupling. These findings suggest that effective eight-arm swimming does not require prescribed inter-arm phase coupling, but
Open source S4episodes
28
Reported trials
View original evidence
, the controller without phase coupling satisfies the tracking criterion in 169 episodes, compared with 117 for the phase-coupled controller and 28 for end-to-end PPO. Straight-line swimming and commanded direction-change trials further demonstrate more accurate velocity tracking without phase coupling. These findings suggest that effective eight-arm swimming does not require prescribed inter-arm phase coupling, but
Open source S4robots
1
View original evidence
orcement learning-based control strategies using proximal policy optimization (PPO): (1) learning arm-specific actuation amplitudes without inter-arm phase coupling, (2) learning actuation amplitudes with prescribed inter-arm phase coupling, and (3) directly learning actuator commands through end-to-end PPO without an explicit rhythmic structure. Across 200 episodes with randomized three-dimensional velocity commands
Open source S3
- paper: not_reported
Source excerpts and review record
Automatically extracted; no manual editorial approval recorded.
orcement learning-based control strategies using proximal policy optimization (PPO): (1) learning arm-specific actuation amplitudes without inter-arm phase coupling, (2) learning actuation amplitudes with prescribed inter-arm phase coupling, and (3) directly learning actuator commands through end-to-end PPO without an explicit rhythmic structure. Across 200 episodes with randomized three-dimensional velocity commands
Open source S3
, the controller without phase coupling satisfies the tracking criterion in 169 episodes, compared with 117 for the phase-coupled controller and 28 for end-to-end PPO. Straight-line swimming and commanded direction-change trials further demonstrate more accurate velocity tracking without phase coupling. These findings suggest that effective eight-arm swimming does not require prescribed inter-arm phase coupling, but
Open source S4
To Coordinate or Not to Coordinate? Learning to Swim with Eight Soft Arms
Open source S1
arXiv:2611.02468v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Does effective swimming with multiple underactuated soft arms require explicit coordination between arms? We hypothesize that an eight-arm swimmer can control its swimming speed and direction by independently learning each arm's actuation amplitude under a shared rhythmic drive, without prescribed inter-arm phase coupling. To test this hypothesis, we compare three reinf
Open source S2
Source：arXiv Robotics — research abstracts · arxiv.org