Terrestrial locomotion

Summary

Terrestrial locomotion has evolved as animals adapted from aquatic to terrestrial environments. Locomotion on land raises different problems than that in water, with reduced friction being replaced by the increased effects of gravity. As viewed from evolutionary taxonomy, there are three basic forms of animal locomotion in the terrestrial environment: *legged – moving by using appendages *limbless locomotion – moving without legs, primarily using the body itself as a propulsive structure. *rolling – rotating the body over the substrate Some terrains and terrestrial surfaces permit or demand alternative locomotive styles. A sliding component to locomotion becomes possible on slippery surfaces (such as ice and snow), where location is aided by potential energy, or on loose surfaces (such as sand or scree), where friction is low but purchase (traction) is difficult. Humans, especially, have adapted to sliding over terrestrial snowpack and terrestrial ice by means of ice skates, snow sk

Official source

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrestrial_locomotion

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related publications (39)

Related publications

Related people (8)

Related people

Related units (4)

Related units

Related concepts (24)

Related concepts

Related courses (1)

The lecture presents an overview of the state of the art in the analysis and modeling of human locomotion and the underlying motor circuits. Multiple aspects are considered including neurophysiology, gait characterization, biomechanics, numerical modeling, neuroprosthetics, and links to biped robots

Related courses

Related lectures

A Position-Control-Based Framework for Dynamic and Robust Quadrupedal Trotting

Song Liu, Boxing Wang, Zeya Yin, Haoyu Zhang

With the emergence of more and more torque-controlled robots, the agility of leg locomotion has been promoted to a new level, which, however, seems also to imply that only torque-controlled robots are appropriate for leg locomotion. This paper demonstrates that a position-control-based robot could also achieve dynamically stable and robust locomotion. With the help of offline dynamic-model-based trajectory optimization algorithms and online simplified-model-based reactive controller, the tested quadruped robot Pupper achieved dynamically stable trot gait both on flat grounds and high slopes of at most 20 degrees. It also gained the ability to trot on and off a 10 mm plank blindly, proving the control framework's effectiveness as well as the potential of a position-control-based robot for indoor or structural environments.

IEEE2021

Legged locomotion with spinal undulations

Konstantinos Karakasiliotis

Legged locomotion with spinal undulations is a topic that has not received much attention yet in robotics, though, vertebrates depend on both their limbs and spine to move efficiently in their environments. In this thesis, my aim is to get more insights into the role and function of these two body parts as well as their coordination. Biology provides several answers to these questions. Salamanders and lizards are great biological paradigms for studying animal locomotion with limbs and flexible spine. Not only do they have a highly flexible spine and limbs that can sometimes vary in strength or even number, but they also demonstrate a rich repertoire of locomotor modes. They can walk on land, while they can swim and walk in water. This provides many more examples on the ways that limbs and spine function and coordinate. Biorobotics is a growing field of robotics that aims at answering questions that cannot be answered from animal observations. Those questions often deal with the development of a specific function of a body part. In my studies, I initially used a bio-inspired amphibious salamander-like robot Salamandra robotica II to extract basic principles of salamander locomotion. Although the improvements of the limb and tail designs enhanced the robot’s performance to a level that was surprisingly close to the salamander’s, several limitations were identified owing to the simplicity of the bio-inspired design. These limitations motivated me to design a new amphibious salamander-like robot, Pleurobot, which is capable of replicating the movements of salamanders with reasonable accuracy. A novel methodology was also used during this process which proved to be effective but simple at the same time. Three-dimensional kinematics of the salamander’s skeleton were recorded and used to guide the design process and optimization of the robot’s morphology and joints’ topology. The raw angular kinematics, extracted from X-ray biplanar videos of salamanders, were then used to drive the joints of Pleurobot, resulting in natural-looking and effective locomotion. The main contributions of this thesis are two-fold: i) biological data and robotic prototypes that improve our understanding on sprawling locomotion and ii) a successful methodology for robotic design for more animal-like robots and agile control

EPFL2013

The main theme of my thesis will be to use neuro-muscular modeling techniques to study locomotion of terrestrial mammals. Locomotion is the ability of animals to interact with the environment to propel themselves in space. It involves co-ordination and precise timing of tens of muscles and multiple joints to produce rhythmic, efficient and robust gaits. It is now understood that it is a complex interaction of brain, spinal cord, the musculo-skeletal system and the environment. During my thesis I plan to develop models of rodents to non-human primates to humans to study the interactions between these components. I will be carrying out my research at BioRob lab and funded by the Human Brain Project. After spending an year on this subject currently I have developed a neuro-muscular hind limb model of a mouse. I am using this model to study different locomotion theories ranging from reflex based abstraction methods to Central Patter Generator networks and spiking neuron based spinal circuits. The closed loop approach seems promising and I am now able to generate stable locomotion on a forward dynamics model using all the mentioned frameworks. The future plan will be to further improve the rodent model with more degrees of freedom in the forelimb and extend the same modeling approach to develop non-human primate and human models to carry out similar experiments.

EPFL2022

Legged locomotion with spinal undulations

Konstantinos Karakasiliotis

EPFL2013