Efficient sliding locomotion of three-link bodies.

We study the efficiency of sliding locomotion for three-link bodies with prescribed joint angle motions. The bodies move with no inertia, under dry (Coulomb) friction that is anisotropic (different in the directions normal and tangent to the links) and directional (different in the forward and backward tangent directions). Friction coefficient space can be partitioned into several regions, each with distinct types of efficient kinematics. These include kinematics resembling lateral undulation with very anisotropic friction, small-amplitude reciprocal kinematics, very large-amplitude kinematics near isotropic friction, and kinematics that are very asymmetric about the flat state. In the two-parameter shape space, zero net rotation for elliptical trajectories occurs mainly with bilateral or antipodal symmetry. These symmetric subspaces have about the same peak efficiency as the full space but with much smaller dimension. Adding the second or third harmonics greatly increases the numbers of local optimal for efficiency, but only modestly increases the peak efficiency. Random ensembles with higher harmonics have efficiency distributions that peak near a certain nonzero value and decay rapidly up to the maximum efficiency. A stochastic optimization algorithm is developed to compute optima with higher harmonics. These are simple closed curves, sharpened versions of the elliptical optima in most cases, and achieve much higher efficiencies mainly for small normal friction. With a linear (viscous) resistance law, the optimal trajectories are similar in much of the friction coefficient space, and relative efficiencies are much lower except with very large normal friction.