Translating How Salamanders Stroll
With assistance from the Human Frontier Science Program, scientists from Tohoku University and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne have figured out the adaptable motor control systems that underlie salamander walking.
On July 30, 2021, their research was released in the journal Frontiers in Neurorobotics.
Animals with four legs may move through challenging, unexpected, and chaotic situations. Their body-limb coordination is what allows them to perform this incredible ability.
A great organism for researching the processes governing body-limb synchronization is the salamander. It is an amphibian with four legs that walks by swaying back and forth, a movement known as undulation.
They have a simpler neurological system than mammals, and they alter their motion depending on how quickly they are going.
Researchers from the Research Institute of Electrical Communication at Tohoku University, under the direction of Professor Akio Ishiguro, mathematically modeled and physically recreated the salamander’s nervous system to decipher its movement.
The researchers’ model was built on the premise that the body and legs cooperate to assist other actions through the sharing of sensory information. Then, using computer simulations, they simulated salamanders’ speed-dependent gait changes.
“We hope this finding provides insights into the essential mechanism behind the adaptive and versatile locomotion of animals,” stated Ishiguro.
The researchers are convinced that their findings will help in the flexible modification of body-limb coordination patterns, enabling the development of robots with exceptional agility and adaptability.
Read the original article on HFSP.org.
