Flexible Coordination of Flexible Limbs: Decentralized Control Scheme for Inter- and Intra-Limb Coordination in Brittle Stars' Locomotion

Kano, Takeshi; Kanauchi, Daichi; Ono, Tomoshige; Aonuma, Hitoshi; Ishiguro, Akio

doi:10.3389/fnbot.2019.00104

Cited by 9 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 34 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In lampreys, complete transection of the rostral spinal cord leads to immediate paralysis, after which locomotor behaviours like swimming and burrowing gradually return over the course of a few months (Fig. 3A, top) (Rovainen, 1976;Selzer, 1978;Cohen et al 1986;Oliphint et al 2010;Katz et al 2020). Remarkably, lampreys can recover nearly normal swimming after one or two complete spinal transections (Fig.…”

Section: Locomotor Network Undergo Long-term Reorganization To Restor...mentioning

confidence: 97%

Resilience of neural networks for locomotion

Haspel

Severi

Fauci

et al. 2021

The Journal of Physiology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Locomotion is an essential behaviour for the survival of all animals. The neural circuitry underlying locomotion is therefore highly robust to a wide variety of perturbations, including injury and abrupt changes in the environment. In the short term, fault tolerance in neural networks allows locomotion to persist immediately after mild to moderate injury. In the longer term, in many invertebrates and vertebrates, neural reorganization including anatomical regeneration can restore locomotion after severe perturbations that initially caused paralysis. Despite decades of research, very little is known about the mechanisms underlying locomotor resilience at the level of the underlying neural circuits and coordination of central pattern generators (CPGs). Undulatory locomotion is an ideal behaviour for exploring principles of circuit organization, neural control and resilience of locomotion, offering a number of unique advantages including experimental accessibility and modelling tractability. In comparing three well‐characterized undulatory swimmers, lampreys, larval zebrafish and Caenorhabditis elegans, we find similarities in the manifestation of locomotor resilience. To advance our understanding, we propose a comparative approach, integrating experimental and modelling studies, that will allow the field to begin identifying shared and distinct solutions for overcoming perturbations to persist in orchestrating this essential behaviour.

show abstract

Section: Locomotor Network Undergo Long-term Reorganization To Restor...mentioning

confidence: 97%

Resilience of neural networks for locomotion

Haspel

Severi

Fauci

et al. 2021

The Journal of Physiology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Previous research (Owaki et al, 2012 , 2017 ; Barikhan et al, 2014 ; Aoi et al, 2017 ; Kano et al, 2017b , 2019 ; Ambe et al, 2018 ) has shown the possibility of offloading the task of interlimb coordination toward body-environment interactions and adaptation to physical damage. By using sensory feedback to trigger reactions in local (decentralized) CPGs and drive individual leg movements, this approach is able to form walking patterns in robots without direct control over the interlimb coordination process.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

General Distributed Neural Control and Sensory Adaptation for Self-Organized Locomotion and Fast Adaptation to Damage of Walking Robots

Miguel-Blanco

Manoonpong

2020

Front. Neural Circuits

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Walking animals such as invertebrates can effectively perform self-organized and robust locomotion. They can also quickly adapt their gait to deal with injury or damage. Such a complex achievement is mainly performed via coordination between the legs, commonly known as interlimb coordination. Several components underlying the interlimb coordination process (like distributed neural control circuits, local sensory feedback, and body-environment interactions during movement) have been recently identified and applied to the control systems of walking robots. However, while the sensory pathways of biological systems are plastic and can be continuously readjusted (referred to as sensory adaptation), those implemented on robots are typically static. They first need to be manually adjusted or optimized offline to obtain stable locomotion. In this study, we introduce a fast learning mechanism for online sensory adaptation. It can continuously adjust the strength of sensory pathways, thereby introducing flexible plasticity into the connections between sensory feedback and neural control circuits. We combine the sensory adaptation mechanism with distributed neural control circuits to acquire the adaptive and robust interlimb coordination of walking robots. This novel approach is also general and flexible. It can automatically adapt to different walking robots and allow them to perform stable self-organized locomotion as well as quickly deal with damage within a few walking steps. The adaptation of plasticity after damage or injury is considered here as lesion-induced plasticity. We validated our adaptive interlimb coordination approach with continuous online sensory adaptation on simulated 4-, 6-, 8-, and 20-legged robots. This study not only proposes an adaptive neural control system for artificial walking systems but also offers a possibility of invertebrate nervous systems with flexible plasticity for locomotion and adaptation to injury.

show abstract

“…Perhaps an inertial measurement unit (IMU) placed at the center of mass could drive rotations and undulations at key points, such as the nose, pectoral, and pelvic regions. Feedback from these points in conjunction with current advances in control algorithms (Santos and Matos, 2012;Koos et al, 2013;Kano et al, 2019) could allow the robot to tune a baseline axial CPG into a hybrid gait suitable for whatever force environment it's in. Then, the robot could not only transition from aquatic to terrestrial locomotion but also deal with a range of perturbations from bumps in the road to loss of body parts.…”

Section: Insights For the Control Of Limbed Robotsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The field of robotics and control could learn a lot from how animals control motion and adapt to extreme perturbations such as the loss of one or more limbs (Trimmer and Lin, 2014;Chattunyakit et al, 2019;Kano et al, 2019). This is especially important for robots deployed in the field for long term missions such as deep sea or space exploration (Koos et al, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There are existing algorithms for investigating new gaits after damage to a limb, but these are computationally expensive, require precise knowledge of the damaged part, and may result in further damage to the robot (Koos et al, 2013). Other options include preprogramming of gaits for specific limb-loss (Mostafa et al, 2010;Kano et al, 2019) but this may fail if the robot is damaged in an unexpected way. If we develop a deeper understanding of how animals use a combination of top-down control (CPGs), sensory feedback, and morphology to overcome extreme perturbations, this could be incorporated into future robotic design.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Body and Tail Coordination in the Bluespot Salamander (Ambystoma laterale) During Limb Regeneration

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Animals are incredibly good at adapting to changes in their environment, a trait envied by most roboticists. Many animals use different gaits to seamlessly transition between land and water and move through non-uniform terrains. In addition to adjusting to changes in their environment, animals can adjust their locomotion to deal with missing or regenerating limbs. Salamanders are an amphibious group of animals that can regenerate limbs, tails, and even parts of the spinal cord in some species. After the loss of a limb, the salamander successfully adjusts to constantly changing morphology as it regenerates the missing part. This quality is of particular interest to roboticists looking to design devices that can adapt to missing or malfunctioning components. While walking, an intact salamander uses its limbs, body, and tail to propel itself along the ground. Its body and tail are coordinated in a distinctive wave-like pattern. Understanding how their bending kinematics change as they regrow lost limbs would provide important information to roboticists designing amphibious machines meant to navigate through unpredictable and diverse terrain. We amputated both hindlimbs of blue-spotted salamanders (Ambystoma laterale) and measured their body and tail kinematics as the limbs regenerated. We quantified the change in the body wave over time and compared them to an amphibious fish species, Polypterus senegalus. We found that salamanders in the early stages of regeneration shift their kinematics, mostly around their pectoral girdle, where there is a local increase in undulation frequency. Amputated salamanders also show a reduced range of preferred walking speeds and an increase in the number of bending waves along the body. This work could assist roboticists working on terrestrial locomotion and water to land transitions.

show abstract

Flexible Coordination of Flexible Limbs: Decentralized Control Scheme for Inter- and Intra-Limb Coordination in Brittle Stars' Locomotion

Cited by 9 publications

References 34 publications

Resilience of neural networks for locomotion

Resilience of neural networks for locomotion

General Distributed Neural Control and Sensory Adaptation for Self-Organized Locomotion and Fast Adaptation to Damage of Walking Robots

Body and Tail Coordination in the Bluespot Salamander (Ambystoma laterale) During Limb Regeneration

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About