http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/services/Feed ${session.getAttribute("locale")} 5 http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:11698 For a biologically inspired mechanical system consisting of multiple segments, its natural oscillation is defined as a periodic body movement pattern conforming to the dynamics inherent to the body-environment interaction, leading to an effective locomotion of the system. In the literature, a central pattern generator based controller has been designed to approximately achieve entrainment to a natural oscillation. This paper further refines the previous result by proposing a controller that achieves exact entrainment, as well as a rigorous stability analysis which leads to a complete solution to the problem of entrainment to natural oscillation. 2012-10-11T03:37:12.271Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:11559 We consider a class of mechanical systems arising from the dynamics of multi-segmental animal locomotion. Our earlier paper has revealed that a chain of body segments oscillate in a natural mode if the head is externally forced to move at a constant velocity and the damping effect is reduced by an appropriate amount. In this paper, we further show that the natural oscillations, in turn, generate a stable forward velocity (of the head) through a rectification mechanism. As a result, an autonomous locomotion behavior is obtained. 2012-09-20T00:09:08.226Z ]]>