  Developing a framework for the locomotion of a six-legged robot or a hexapod
is a complex task that has extensive hardware and computational requirements.
In this paper, we present a bio-inspired framework for the locomotion of a
hexapod. Our locomotion model draws inspiration from the structure of a
cockroach, with its fairly simple central nervous system, and results in our
model being computationally inexpensive with simpler control mechanisms. We
consider the limb morphology for a hexapod, the corresponding central pattern
generators for its limbs, and the inter-limb coordination required to generate
appropriate patterns in its limbs. We also designed two experiments to validate
our locomotion model. Our first experiment models the predator-prey dynamics
between a cockroach and its predator. Our second experiment makes use of a
reinforcement learning-based algorithm, putting forward a realization of our
locomotion model. These experiments suggest that this model will help realize
practical hexapod robot designs.
