scholarly journals Decoding the essential interplay between central and peripheral control in adaptive locomotion of amphibious centipedes

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kotaro Yasui ◽  
Takeshi Kano ◽  
Emily M. Standen ◽  
Hitoshi Aonuma ◽  
Auke J. Ijspeert ◽  
...  

AbstractAmphibious animals adapt their body coordination to compensate for changing substrate properties as they transition between terrestrial and aquatic environments. Using behavioural experiments and mathematical modelling of the amphibious centipede Scolopendra subspinipes mutilans, we reveal an interplay between descending command (brain), local pattern generation, and sensory feedback that controls the leg and body motion during swimming and walking. The elongated and segmented centipede body exhibits a gradual transition in the locomotor patterns as the animal crosses between land and water. Changing environmental conditions elicit a mechano-sensory feedback mechanism, inducing a gait change at the local segment level. The body segments operating downstream of a severed nerve cord (no descending control) can generate walking with mechano-sensory inputs alone while swimming behaviour is not recovered. Integrating the descending control for swimming initiation with the sensory feedback control for walking in a mathematical model successfully generates the adaptive behaviour of centipede locomotion, capturing the possible mechanism for flexible motor control in animals.

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 151-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akira Fukuhara ◽  
Yukihiro Koizumi ◽  
Shura Suzuki ◽  
Takeshi Kano ◽  
Akio Ishiguro

As a mechanism for survival, quadrupeds have obtained skills involving coordination between limbs and the body (i.e. body–limb coordination), providing fast and adaptive locomotion compared with motion using only limbs. Several bio-inspired robotics studies have resulted in the development of legged robots that utilize a flexible spine, similar to cheetahs. However, the control principle of body–limb coordination has not been established to date. From the perspective of a decentralized control scheme, a minimal body–limb coordination mechanism is proposed in this study, in which body parts aid each other via a sensory feedback mechanism. The two-dimensional simulation and hardware experiments reveal that bilateral sensory feedback between limbs and body is essential for the robot to adaptively generate a body–limb coordination pattern and achieve faster locomotion speed than that by only limbs in efficient manner.


Author(s):  
Johan Roenby ◽  
Hassan Aref

The model of body–vortex interactions, where the fluid flow is planar, ideal and unbounded, and the vortex is a point vortex, is studied. The body may have a constant circulation around it. The governing equations for the general case of a freely moving body of arbitrary shape and mass density and an arbitrary number of point vortices are presented. The case of a body and a single vortex is then investigated numerically in detail. In this paper, the body is a homogeneous, elliptical cylinder. For large body–vortex separations, the system behaves much like a vortex pair regardless of body shape. The case of a circle is integrable. As the body is made slightly elliptic, a chaotic region grows from an unstable relative equilibrium of the circle-vortex case. The case of a cylindrical body of any shape moving in fluid otherwise at rest is also integrable. A second transition to chaos arises from the limit between rocking and tumbling motion of the body known in this case. In both instances, the chaos may be detected both in the body motion and in the vortex motion. The effect of increasing body mass at a fixed body shape is to damp the chaos.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 593
Author(s):  
Ryota Yanagisawa ◽  
Shunsuke Shigaki ◽  
Kotaro Yasui ◽  
Dai Owaki ◽  
Yasuhiro Sugimoto ◽  
...  

In this study, we fabricated a novel wearable vibration sensor for insects and measured their wing flapping. An analysis of insect wing deformation in relation to changes in the environment plays an important role in understanding the underlying mechanism enabling insects to dynamically interact with their surrounding environment. It is common to use a high-speed camera to measure the wing flapping; however, it is difficult to analyze the feedback mechanism caused by the environmental changes caused by the flapping because this method applies an indirect measurement. Therefore, we propose the fabrication of a novel film sensor that is capable of measuring the changes in the wingbeat frequency of an insect. This novel sensor is composed of flat silver particles admixed with a silicone polymer, which changes the value of the resistor when a bending deformation occurs. As a result of attaching this sensor to the wings of a moth and a dragonfly and measuring the flapping of the wings, we were able to measure the frequency of the flapping with high accuracy. In addition, as a result of simultaneously measuring the relationship between the behavior of a moth during its search for an odor source and its wing flapping, it became clear that the frequency of the flapping changed depending on the frequency of the odor reception. From this result, a wearable film sensor for an insect that can measure the displacement of the body during a particular behavior was fabricated.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanjun Ryu ◽  
Hyun-moon Park ◽  
Moo-Kang Kim ◽  
Bosung Kim ◽  
Hyoun Seok Myoung ◽  
...  

AbstractSelf-powered implantable devices have the potential to extend device operation time inside the body and reduce the necessity for high-risk repeated surgery. Without the technological innovation of in vivo energy harvesters driven by biomechanical energy, energy harvesters are insufficient and inconvenient to power titanium-packaged implantable medical devices. Here, we report on a commercial coin battery-sized high-performance inertia-driven triboelectric nanogenerator (I-TENG) based on body motion and gravity. We demonstrate that the enclosed five-stacked I-TENG converts mechanical energy into electricity at 4.9 μW/cm3 (root-mean-square output). In a preclinical test, we show that the device successfully harvests energy using real-time output voltage data monitored via Bluetooth and demonstrate the ability to charge a lithium-ion battery. Furthermore, we successfully integrate a cardiac pacemaker with the I-TENG, and confirm the ventricle pacing and sensing operation mode of the self-rechargeable cardiac pacemaker system. This proof-of-concept device may lead to the development of new self-rechargeable implantable medical devices.


Author(s):  
Minglu Chen ◽  
Shan Huang ◽  
Nigel Baltrop ◽  
Ji Chunyan ◽  
Liangbi Li

Mooring line damping plays an important role to the body motion of moored floating platforms. Meanwhile, it can also make contributions to optimize the mooring line system. Accurate assessment of mooring line damping is thus an essential issue for offshore structure design. However, it is difficult to determine the mooring line damping based on theoretical methods. This study considers the parameters which have impact on mooring-induced damping. In the paper, applying Morison formula to calculate the drag and initial force on the mooring line, its dynamic response is computed in the time domain. The energy dissipation of the mooring line due to the viscosity was used to calculate mooring-induced damping. A mooring line is performed with low-frequency oscillation only, the low-frequency oscillation superimposed with regular and irregular wave-frequency motions. In addition, the influences of current velocity, mooring line pretension and different water depths are taken into account.


2004 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-396 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rick Grush

The emulation theory of representation is developed and explored as a framework that can revealingly synthesize a wide variety of representational functions of the brain. The framework is based on constructs from control theory (forward models) and signal processing (Kalman filters). The idea is that in addition to simply engaging with the body and environment, the brain constructs neural circuits that act as models of the body and environment. During overt sensorimotor engagement, these models are driven by efference copies in parallel with the body and environment, in order to provide expectations of the sensory feedback, and to enhance and process sensory information. These models can also be run off-line in order to produce imagery, estimate outcomes of different actions, and evaluate and develop motor plans. The framework is initially developed within the context of motor control, where it has been shown that inner models running in parallel with the body can reduce the effects of feedback delay problems. The same mechanisms can account for motor imagery as the off-line driving of the emulator via efference copies. The framework is extended to account for visual imagery as the off-line driving of an emulator of the motor-visual loop. I also show how such systems can provide for amodal spatial imagery. Perception, including visual perception, results from such models being used to form expectations of, and to interpret, sensory input. I close by briefly outlining other cognitive functions that might also be synthesized within this framework, including reasoning, theory of mind phenomena, and language.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yiyu Chen ◽  
Abhinav Pandey ◽  
Zhiwei Deng ◽  
Anthony Nguyen ◽  
Ruiqi Wang ◽  
...  

Abstract The global COVID-19 pandemic has inevitably made disinfection a daily routine to ensure the safety of public and private spaces. However, the existing disinfection procedures are time-consuming and require intensive human labor to apply chemical-based disinfectant onto contaminated surfaces. In this paper, a robot disinfection system is presented to increase the automation of the disinfection task to assist humans in performing routine disinfection safely and efficiently. This paper presents a semi-autonomous quadruped robot called LASER-D for performing disinfection in cluttered environments. The robot is equipped with a spray-based disinfection system and leverages the body motion to control the spray action without an extra stabilization mechanism. The spraying unit is mounted on the robot’s back and controlled by the robot computer. The control architecture is designed based on force control, resulting in navigating rough terrains and the flexibility in controlling the body motion during standing and walking for the disinfection task. The robot also uses the vision system to improve localization and maintain desired distance to the disinfection surface. The system incorporates image processing capability to evaluate disinfected regions with high accuracy. This feedback is then used to adjust the disinfection plan to guarantee that all assigned areas are disinfected properly. The system is also equipped with highly integrated simulation software to design, simulate and evaluate disinfection plans effectively. This work has allowed the robot to successfully carry out effective disinfection experiments while safely traversing through cluttered environments, climb stairs/slopes, and navigate on slippery surfaces.


Author(s):  
X. Tong ◽  
B. Tabarrok

Abstract In this paper the global motion of a rigid body subject to small periodic torques, which has a fixed direction in the body-fixed coordinate frame, is investigated by means of Melnikov’s method. Deprit’s variables are introduced to transform the equations of motion into a form describing a slowly varying oscillator. Then the Melnikov method developed for the slowly varying oscillator is used to predict the transversal intersections of stable and unstable manifolds for the perturbed rigid body motion. It is shown that there exist transversal intersections of heteroclinic orbits for certain ranges of parameter values.


Author(s):  
A.Y. Peretyatko ◽  

For the pre-revolutionary Don historiography, complaints about the lack of a full-fledged generalizing work of the history of the Cossacks were extremely characteristic. As shown in the article, a similar situation is observed in our time: the article has again become the main genre of Cossack historiography, and the understanding of a huge number of publications on the history of various Cossack troops is extremely difficult. The author proves that in these conditions, works that claim to generalize become especially important, but it is extremely difficult to summarize all the facts, developments and research concepts on any broad topic of Cossack history. In his opinion, the search for other methods of scientific generalization and perception by historians of the developments of their colleagues looks promising. One of these ways he sees the organization of round tables on specifically Cossack topics, especially dedicated to new discoveries.


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